We are seeing a devolution into strict lines of blue vs red team political argumentation.

This is what comes from escalation.

Each side can point to the other side as the instigator of bogus and inflammatory claims.

Yes, the left seems to take to the streets more readily, and do deplorable things (e.g. defecate on police cars).

That kind of stuff never was what the average obama supporter would do, though “they” “own” it because “they” didn’t decry it, thus they must be part of “them”, the broadly brushed “left”.

Meantime, “we” stand by as trump seems to court racists and misogynists, let alone says things so contradictory “we” know he is mutable, but that is all “acceptable”.

The left broadly brushes the “right” as “racists”, etc..

Surprise!

Then, folks want to proudly wear the badge “deplorable”, like association with these things is a good thing.
.

In the end, it is just all a hyperbolic blue vs red team political game our “leaders” and the media on both sides engage in.

They get us all to declare ourselves “victim”, a much craved and vaunted status nowadays, enraging us to ever higher levels to justify greater centralization and use of power against “them”.

In this tit for tat game, the escalation continues.
.

trump represents an escalation at the highest level. We used to expect some kind of decorum with our POTUS.

But now, to “get our way”, eff decorum. Afterall, obama “started it!”

We want someone to “tell it like it is”, only we are just getting different spin and “alternative facts”, and such. Somehow, that is okay.

The dems used raw power to push through obamacare, circumvent budget deliberations on $1T deficits, eliminate the Senate fillibuster for appointments, etc.

So, screw ’em, we are going to do them one better!

“Our” POTUS will issue even more, and possibly broader EOs and other EAs, Congress will pass laws strictly on party lines, and the Senate will eliminate the final fillibuster. All, A-OK!

Heck, we don’t like the judical decisions on a case before the courts, after our POTUS screwed up – blame them, and give trump a bye.

Call it being merely thin skinned and/or cheer him on when he declares the judiciary biased and political, just like how he earlier suggested a judge to be unfit to rule because of his Mexican heritage.

It’s “refreshing” he is saying something we are “thinking” (ignoring how self-serving for trump it all is).

As if furthering the accelerating the downward spiral of distrust this precipitates is a good thing.
.

So, yes, dems/left = bad, right/trump = good.

trump cannot be criticized for any of the escalation because it is the left’s fault – THEY are the ones who are more intense than ever, donchaknow!

/rant
.

This is destructive!

Yes, we (really, really) need change. But, it needs to be lasting change.

We will not get it this way!

We need to start getting out of the echo bubble, get perspective, and engage.
.

How is it a black man can talk a KKK leader out of his role and give up his robes?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/every-racist-i-know-voted-for-donald-trump/516420/

“They” are not a monolithic bloc of humanity.

“They” are individuals that can be convinced.

Not all of “them” see things in a uniform blue vs red team perspective, all the time.

You might be surprised to see someone in a leftist publication questioning how polls are reported?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-supporters-bowling-green-massacre_us_589df750e4b0ab2d2b14cb22

Maybe, after we clear out all the hot rhetoric and hyperbole, not everything the left says is without some merit?
.

Maybe our best response is not to engage in ever more outrage against the left (which seems to only get mirrored back at us), but expecting accountability on all sides, and truth rather than spin and partial truths.

Maybe we ought to expect our POTUS to set the cultural tone for the country and behave responsibly and competently.

G0d knows we’ve seen enough departure from that over the last eight years.

Do we really think doubling down will get us to a better place?

Are we so sure that without bringing more than trump’s core support on board to get things “our” way, it will outlast this admin?
.

Maybe our concern about the msm, and its losing credibility is really a statement about ourselves and our own inability or reluctance to engage and convince others who are not in our bubble of like-mindedness.

Democracy, even as it is structured in this Republic, is founded on the idea we must bring sufficient numbers together to agree on the path forward.

There is only one way around that, and that is to turn our back on democracy.

Is that what we want?

If not, the question to each of us is, then why encourage this escalation?

Ponder all this before y’all jump on comments like Montage’s, as “it takes two to tango”, as they say.
.

Apologies for the long “essay”, but lately it seems the arguments here are sliding back into the usual, and perhaps more comfortable, we vs they mode – being all in about how bad the left are (of course “they” are, but not every one of “them” agrees with “them”), and downplay the contributions to all this by trump and his staff in the response we see from the left and the msm.

And, before y’all come down on me, as several of you surely will, I’ve seen first hand how the left in the msm play – they lied on national television about a significant event I observed.

I have no sympathy for the left, nor for those in the msm who perpetuate and encourage all this, as not all of it is merely biased.

However, our “side” are not angels by any means.

The left and msm are seemingly the “worst ever”. Fair.

Is it merely coincidence that our side also, by several measures, seems to the left as the “worst ever”?

This is NOT something to “get over” and ignore.

I only hope that the many great cabinet picks have the ability to tame some of the worst of trump and elbow out those in his admin who’d encourage more of the same.

If something doesn’t change, then this opportunity we’ve been given will be squandered.

Also, 538 isn’t a polling outfit; they analyze polls (among other things). Their analysis was a little off, but not outside the mainstream. And if they wanted to manipulate the election, they should have been saying that Clinton was a couple of points behind. Saying that someone is ahead reduces turnout.

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/31183/

“White privilege” is the new “Jewish untermensch.”

Ach.

Troubling.

Too, in a time when Democrats are often easily stirred up into a frenzy by imaginative linkages from Pres. Trump’s invocation of an “America First” policy today by jumping backward toward the ’30s Lindbergian America Firsters (how handy for those who revel in opportunities to suggest a sulking Nazism on the loose!), calling out nullificationists [Ooo, six! how unwieldy!] for what they are may invoke just a tad too much truth for these delicate Democrat’s political sensibilities.

And we mustn’t have that. Feelings, you know. Gotta respect those feelings.

I think the toxic political talk is bad on both sides. When Obama was president the hysteria from the right was just as nonsensical. That he was really a Muslim, that he was for open borders, that he would be grabbing our guns, that he was a Marxist….”

– Obama’s embrace of the doctrine of “positive liberty”
– His statement that “mere tolerance is not enough”
– The shared individual responsibility mandate. And,
“that’s how we take care of each other”

Not a Marxist? Argue that if your wish. The fact is that he is near enough.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2012/09/23/why-the-fuss-obama-has-long-been-on-record-in-favor-of-redistribution/#8c3f4125db64

Re: polls. All pollsters – especially the anointed ones like 538 – were out for Trump’s blood from Day 1. If you think they were out to predict, I’d say that’s pretty delusional. They were out to aid Clinton and they tried every trick in the book to make the Clinton look unbeatable. 538 didn’t even have a single writer who was Independent. They were all rabid D’s and acted accordingly. And so did the other big pollers. The only exception that I am aware of was the LATimes, and they were continuously ridiculed.

Re TNY: I don’t think you know anything about The New Yorker or its standing here in NYC. The New Yorker was the standard bearer of high culture for many, many decades. Politics was usually a sideshow until Remnick was appointed Editor. And now he’s gone even further – literally to the point of hysteria. The NR was never primarily a “cultural” magazine. It was always political in nature.

The reason I brought up 1 and 2 was because you opened your comments by saying, “I think the toxic political talk is bad on both sides.” I posted #1 because I cannot recall any earlier presidential candidate ever saying anything so incendiary – thus it was not the right that started it. And Point #2 was a gentle reminder that the vast majority of supporters of the right don’t act out violently, don’t get their talking points from communists and others trying to foment REVOLUTION, and, have generally acted like adults. So, please spare us the toxic political talk is bad on both sides because the degree and support is not the same at all between the right and the left.