#partisanship

Most oppose the war effort and even seem to hope for failure. Source link

Well the title just wore me out. Let’s start with the easy part, partisanship is effing this country good.

Second how do you address people, identify where you see the problem without name calling. Well I just blew it in the title, but I feel stuck saying clueless elitist because that is exactly the problem with a good chunk of the leadership on the left.

Which leads to the sad part of MAGA. There is only a minority of MAGA that is racist and misogynist and unfortunately that is the loudest part on social media. There are some MAGA that get involved, yet they are overshadowed by the worst of their movement. Why do I say this is sad because unbeknownst to the left many of these people are the hard working Americans they talked down to for decades. Hence the cluelessness.

I have talked about it before yet without the emphasis on partisanship making it worse. In fact extremely worse therefore the effing it up problem. And partisanship is effing the country not just the two sides.

Put good hard working Americans who just wanted to have someone stick it to the people who  ignored them politically and generally economically, add in FOX News creating a demonization narrative that began to hypnotize them, a one sided partisan argument that acted like they were on the hard working American’s side when actually their political actions added to the struggles of these same hard working Americans and you have the recipe for the greatest grifter in our country to succeed. Trump knew the words of the anger. He doesn’t give a spit about his voters, but he knew how to spit out the words. He knew well what they wanted to hear. And now he has taken partisanship to a whole new level. The clueless left can’t match it though.

They do have sort of a base, yet nothing as intense as the wave of hate Trump jumped on and is surfing through every turmoil he can or did create to continue to hold in line scared Republicans who care more about their little island of power than the people they represent.

And this is why it is sad for MAGA. The one person they felt understood and appreciated them stashed them on his surfboard and created a tsunami that is destroying this country. And they are all on board screaming with joy as their lives are about to be thrown against the rocks when the wave crashes. Unfortunately this is all about to crash down on the whole country so yeah even us “who didn’t vote for this” will be wiped out. So is this the end?

It never is, it is just a matter of how fast we can figure out what to do when the wave hits the rocks and the subsequent undertow pulls us all under. How do we swim back to shore?

We can’t rely on the cold water waking MAGA up immediately. It may or may not take a generation. And my fear is those waiting in the surf as the water clears will be the clueless elitists with a damning I told you so attitude. And the kind that ain’t good for healing. Yeah, the same mindset that ignored the real problems facing this country as they told us everything we did especially MAGA that was wrong with us. Complete and utter elitism with no understanding their partisanship is part of the problem.

So instead of the waters clearing, the murkiness will continue unless we who understand both sides of the current left/right partisan madness then realize we can’t let either side take charge. And it is okay if there is a left/right or true conservative/liberal divide in the country. I stated before I believe in that let’s say minor dichotomy. Why, because times change and you need policies that reflect the times. And sometimes we need to move forward and sometimes we need to pull back. It works when we understand we are not partisan sides trying to win, but offer solutions that work best for the times.

We were already headed for a my side must win long before Trump joined the partisanship battle in American politics. He was just the catalyst the created the current I would say gridlock, but it much more than that politically.

So going back a couple of paragraphs, I do believe in the left/right see saw or whatever other metaphor floats your boat, but what I do not like is saying compromise is a solution. Or the system needs compromise. No, it doesn’t. Compromise only dilutes what you are trying to do to appease people and can create gridlock. And as mentioned we are nowhere near any political gridlock, we are two hard headed rams butting each other and getting nowhere. And we are about to fall off the cliff of sanity.

So right now and going forward in the immediate future people not caught up in the effing partisan rams falling off the cliff need to find a few very specific issues that affects the vast majority of this country. And I mean just a few issues and where liberal or conservative is more about what is the best solution. We need to work on those for a few election cycles, really sit down and hammer out solutions so we can start clearing the water and give something concrete people can see in the water.

And there are a few issues people can prioritize pretty easily in my limited sight. Social security, balancing the budget, leveling the tax code and finally new election finance and campaign laws. The first three can be worked on together in some of the policy. The campaign laws need vigorous overall so people can be represented, not the select few. Money should not be the driving force behind choosing people to represent us. Somehow we need to make this change now.

There are other major issues that need immediate attention also, such as new immigration policy, and a rebuild of what education means to us as a country. For now the immediate needs are paramount. The direction must change and spending two or three election cycles working on settling the dynamics down and fix our immediate financial situation gives us the biggest bang for the immediate buck now worth 28 cents.

You can argue what might be more important and if you have a good case I will listen. I chose my three based on some general concerns. Social security was our first program to help the average person and we need it to survive so people can survive. The budget is a disaster. Yes we need to reign in spending, it is imperative, you just can’t spend all the time. Cuts will need to be made. Not the DOGE cuts for political theatre, but real well thought out cuts, so this is why I say two or three election cycles. Our government can still do in the background much of what it already does, but we need to reduce the bureaucracy, not dramatically, but practically. There are things we need from out government like roads or law enforcement. Those will need work now and in the future, yet for us to move forward we need to identify the most important issues facing us. I have laid out the campaign issue and then the trilogy of tax code renovation/leveling, social security and the budget. And you can tie some of the solutions up in one package if done right.

Then by the grace of God if you can not compromise, yet actually write real solutions we, the people get victory at so many levels that by then the waters will have cleared. Once we see our feet again standing in the surf, we can start working on the next highest priorities to continue this great experiment of what our country truly can become. And yes then the right/left or liberal/conservative pendulum can swing as needed not based on partisanship, but who has the best ideas for the moment.

It’s not normal for public health to be so partisan. The current administration has slashed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs that protect Americans from cancer, heart disease, stroke, birth defects and workplace harms. It has derailed lifesaving programs created by President George W. Bush that protect children from malaria and prevent the spread of HIV, tuberculosis, and…

Published: Sep 17, 2025

“THE DATA is clear,” said J.D. Vance. “People on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence.” The vice-president made the claim while hosting “The Charlie Kirk Show”, five days after the murder of the show’s presenter. Mr Vance cited evidence from YouGov, a pollster. It shows that Americans who identify as liberal (ie, politically left of centre) are substantially more likely than conservatives or moderates to think that political violence could sometimes be justified and that it is acceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure. Mr Vance is correct about the data, but, as our charts show, the reality the polls reflect is complex.

Other surveys back up the findings cited by Mr Vance. Polling commissioned by The Economist (also conducted by YouGov) shows that 20% of liberals think political violence can be justified, compared with 7% of conservatives and moderates. Our polling shows that liberals of all ages are more likely to condone political violence than conservatives but those under 40 are especially likely to do so. Almost one in three young American liberals thinks that violence can sometimes be justified to achieve political goals (see chart 1). The results agree with polling which suggests that a substantial minority of young liberals were sympathetic to Luigi Mangione, a 27-year-old who is charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, a health-care executive.

However, such findings are likely to be affected both by how pollsters ask questions and when they do. As an extreme example, the American Values Study, a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a non-partisan outfit, asked whether “true American patriots” should resort to violence to “save our country”. When the pollsters put the question this way they found that Republicans were more likely than Democrats to endorse violence (see chart 2). Indeed, the biggest single act of political violence in recent years was the storming of the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on January 6th 2021.

Events also influence how people respond to such questions. PRRI found a dramatic drop in Republican support for political violence after Mr Trump became president for the second time. Polls by YouGov conducted before Kirk’s murder as well as after it also reveal that partisans are far more likely to describe political violence as a “very big problem” in the aftermath of an attack on someone they agree with (see chart 3). The survey cited by Mr Vance was conducted immediately after the murder of Kirk, a leader of the right. That’s probably one reason why Republicans’ condemnation of political violence was stronger than Democrats’.

In 2022 a team of political scientists tried to control for the influence of recent events and for the possibility that vague questions lead respondents to overstate their sympathy for political violence. They did so by asking people about their support for fictional acts of violence. They found when respondents were presented with examples of specific violent acts their support for violence was as much as 13 times lower than when they were asked about violence more abstract terms.

The risk in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder is that a cycle of political violence will become self-reinforcing. Research suggests that partisans overestimate their ideological foes’ support for violence by as much as a factor of four (see chart 4). Fearing their opponents, they become more supportive of violence themselves. When they learn the truth their support for violence falls by a third. By giving the impression that liberals are violence-prone, without mitigating nuance or context, Mr Vance did nothing to allay fears among conservatives.

Other research suggests that high-profile acts of political violence can increase support for violence among those who dislike the victim. That adds to the many reasons that Democratic politicians and other liberal public figures, whatever their views of Kirk, must robustly condemn his murder, and all forms of political violence.