gonna be hard to have a "good" discussion with you if your mind is made up on crime families being R and D and that's life, deal with it.
It's not "hard" if you have a reason & evidence based argument for an opposing viewpoint, so far you haven't tried very hard to formulate one.
we've been around 240+ years and not all of them have been divisive now have they? last time it was almost this bad was late 60s, early 70s and we worked through that one. this is just a shining example of us as a country at our worst. whether we survive this or not is still up to us.
Your optimism is admirable, however given that we have entered an era unlike any that has come before particularly with respect to financial risks, expansion of central government power and the sophistication of the public opinion manipulation apparatus I fear it is misplaced and might warrant some reevaluation.
you're right. i haven't.
you can't really do that in a subjective time like this, so i won't bother trying to prove a state of mind i have. you either understand it or you don't.
you don't.
and even if i grit my teeth, clench my fists and cry out YOU SUCK like so many others,
what changes? other than i'm now pissed off a lot more than i used to be?
The act of formulating a reason and evidence based argument forces you to challenge your own strongly held beliefs, the benefits of which are twofold:
a. You might discover that your own internal biases have steered you in the wrong direction (as long as you don't succumb to the
confirmation bias affliction while doing it).
b. Barring A. refining your argument makes you more adapt at convincing others that your viewpoint is correct
Refusing to even try just helps convince others that you're either not very confident in your own viewpoints or that you're incapable of defending them effectively.
In any case, you're right, this forum offers only a very limited mode of doing that.
