polarized society

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Anyone noticed how the general public seems to be in a very polarized mindset? Theyr either totally liberal or totally conservative... It's like there isn't a middle ground, your on one side or the other. And whatever side you choose, you hafta follow blindly. Conservatives want a theocratic dictatorship, liberals want to avoid problems if it means being called politically incorrect because theyr cowards.
Even in religion... My theory is why not just take the parts you agree with from various diverse religious, sociological, political, and philosophical ideologies and scrap the rest? Why let a label do all your thinking for you?

While society is polarized, I am not certain its poles are 'conservatism' and its supposed opposite. The ones that occur to me are 'predators' and those beings they prey upon, with political affiliations being an effectual disguise.

Does that sound plausible?

D. Y.

dy, yes your theory certainly sounds plausible indeed.

snake, the reason people adopt ideologies wholesale is that free thinking is an attribute sadly lacking in most people. they largely define themselves by the labels they choose to attach to themselves.

I'm not trying to sound arrogant but that's why I feel superior to the human race, like I'm too good to be in a human body... It's because I don't need to cling to a label and let someone else think for me. We truely do live in a totally brainwashed world....
And yes, conservative and liberal aren't merely political labels, theyr sociological labels, they interpret what mode of thinking people exhibit now days... There's also a 3rd one in America predominatly NT, it's called Generation Mtv, where kids are brainwashed to be careless, apathetic, and ***purposely*** stupid to follow a degrating trend.
Of coarse beaurocrats bought Mtv for this reason and to gain dictatorial control over the music industry (as they have done with all recreational arts).

I think that conservative and liberal or more accurately left and right are good ideas for what the poles are because it does seem to be somewhat true. There are a lot of debates going on and the opposing sides have totally different ideas of what it is to be moral and definitely different ideas on how society is meant to work. There is a lot of debate going on about that, about the different views on immigration, on marriage, on economics and so on and so forth, it could be less in other nations but it is big in the US. I don't think that there is a massive problem in free thought though, there are conservatives who believe in gay marriage or abortion and there are people on the left who believe in strong capitalism and such it is just that those people are usually ignored because the wholesale right and left are reflections of ideas that are commonly found together to some extent, parties can totally switch their views on certain issues if their voting base does the same.

I think that the model of predators and prey is not very plausible because the divide is too difficult to make. Considering the massive size of society there are so many factors, what really divides predator and prey in a society where one person can function as both and where this can only be seen in the context of their actions involving other people and not any other accessible traits. A pole creates a pronounced divide but the divide here between predator and prey is not very pronounced.

you hit the nail on the head there, snake. although i think there are probably more people who think like you do than you think there are. but in general peoples perception of reality and life are severly skewed and limited.

I think that liberalism and conservatism are vast spectrums, and the people involved frequently have vast complicated belief sets which often intertwine.

It's just that whenever they are described it is in forms so reduced that it no longer holds any meaning.

It's the same way as with Environmentalists and Loggers. We are to believe that they are bitter enemies with irreconcilable differences. But if you actually take any time at all you'll see that they aren't by any means mutually exclusive. (It's off topic, so I'll give the short version of that forrests can be good for the economy, and it is beneficial to keep them around so they can kept getting logged)


I've seen a vast range of Liberals. Some are fine with vicious punishment. I've talked to conservatives that genuinely want to help the poor (I'm not sure exactly how that one guy wanted to do it to be honest. I think he may have just kind of stopped at the wanting to help. Social programs didn't seem to be his thing)


Furthermore, this issue varies a considerable amount from region to region. You could be considered a radical liberal if in one region you proposed the guilotine for <insert unpopular group here> rather then stoning them to death.


Where one is on the political spectrum gets a lot of attention, but to be quite honest the issues are mainly about policy, perception, and the undying belief that their side is the one that holds the truth. Well at least the people that the media manufactures. (Joe politician on TV vs Joe politician off TV)

If you are left, you take flak from the majority of arrogant right wingers

If you are right, you take crap from the minority of whiney left wingers

If you are somewhere in between, you are caught in the crossfire from both

I don't necessarily see American society as being polarized. There are two parties, both of which whom are a part of one larger party, which could rightfully be called the business party. The liberal sector is more or less concerned with labor and some aspects of middle management, e.g. most professors in college who teach management courses are liberal. The conservative sector is far more aligned with the ownership society. Social security, for example, is simply a band-aid approach used to patch up a hole in a system that is crumbling. Most of what is done tends to be band-aid approaches, and the term 'reform' used in American politics is simply nonsense. There are no reforms going on. The reform for social security, for example, involves a lie that says that social security is going bankrupt, as well as to push a privatized system based on market revenue, thus forcing our elderly population to deal with the cut-throat society.

The prison system is still intact, as well as is the outdated and irrational drug war. The military-industrial complex is still intact, with Lockheed Martin and Boeing still producing weapons of mass destruction. The public school system is still intact, as well as is the standardized testing methodologies used to increase illiteracy rates. The corporate hierarchical structure is still intact, and most liberal organizations adopt this very structure. All of this with years of liberals and conservatives running congress. It was Clinton who signed NAFTA, after all, which was one seen as a conservative concept, and all the liberals stood behind Clinton when he went over and toured Asia to promote "job markets," markets that would throw out US workers and convince companies to move if they did not want to pay a minimum wage, health benefits, or to produce an environment worthy of living in.

Personally, I support a party system in which people can become members of and become actively interested in, much like those in some European countries. Typically, US parties rely on fundraising and bribery.

- Ray M -

If you are a moderate in this day and age, your opinions, your rational, thought-out, logic-and-fact based opinions, are lost in the sea of verbal garbage such as "Conservatives want a theocratic dictatorship"

Conservative and liberal aren't merely political labels, theyr sociological these days.

And yes, conservative republicans are pushing for a theocratic dictatorship. It's plainly obvious if you read a history book or study politics. To use an analogy, it's like if you see a man in a ski mask carrying a gun walk into a bank, you can safely assume he's gonna rob the bank.

Politically, religion is used as a tool. It is used to silence the population and to give them a false hope in the name of God when all the things go wrong and the society starts crumbling. If you can convince the population that our morals are crumbling, you just bring out the word God, force children to pray in schools, etc... This is the ultimate technique of social control, and the concept of morality works better than anything else. If you can convince the world that our children are a national disgrace because they are sorely lacking religious values, which has little to do with why things are the way they are, then that is the ultimate social control.

Religious values are intangible things used to sway the population away from what really matters.

- Ray M -

Conservative and liberal do apply to things that go deeper than just politics as the different adherents have very different beliefs and see a totally different future for the nation.

No, they are not. Who is your history teacher? Who is you political science teacher? I have read history books, I have studied politics but I do not see the republicans creating a theocratic dictatorship. Heck, I even have more background in such things than the average person, but to be honest Jackson was probably more of a dictator than Bush was(considering that Jackson would totally trample on the constitution as it suited him like with the trail of tears and the killing of the bank). Certainly the republicans are appealing to the religious right but the step from that to creating a theocratic dictatorship is enormous and something I tend to doubt that the republicans are even capable of doing.

I assume you don't know what a dictatorship is... or more accurately, that you don't know much in general.

Ooo ooo! I want to get in on the petty flaming too!

Anyone to the right of socialist is a disgusting pig. And like a pig should be slaughtered and ground up to feed the poor.

Death to the bourgoise!

Well I'm a true liberal, both poltically and ecomically but I won't nationialise everything, if it ain't brocken don't fix it.