Re: Women detail sexual allegations against Trump
This fear is entirely based on a false notion of identity; and a lack of education. Most Conservatives take insult to this bit, but there is a reason the first thing so many of them state when faced with facts is "that's your education talking." The answer to that is...um...yes...it is. We all grow up with a certain personal influence that places us on a path. I am perfect here...
edited for space
But the "pursuit of happiness" was based on the traditionally historical notion that governments and the aristocracy stood fixed as barriers. Jefferson meant that Americans have the right to pursue happiness and that no American government can ever be a barrier. Unfortunately, we are currently in an age where too much of our population votes against its own socioeconomic interests...because they are "uneducated."
Wow is all I can say at the outset, you are a very gifted writer; that from someone who earned a damned good living off the English language so accept it for what its worth.
On that I will begin with the most trivial of your post first. From journalism training where quotation marks and period placement can be the difference between freedom and jail or at least a nasty law suit: The period inside the quotes indicate it was the end of that person's sentence, allowing for, as in journalism a continuation of the sentence. Ergo: He said "anything goes anymore. There are no rules, no nothing." and went on to extrapolate....dah, dah.
The period outside is an indication the entire sentence dies there. Journalese but I was taught by exacting German editors at the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, a newspaper of little distinction other than firing me, who went on to 'star' in radio and television.
How I got there was a result of Richard Nixon's victory in '68, being a dual citizen I found it convenient to return to the land of my birth. Hate me now but I worked volunteer for a draft dodger support group. I was raised by a master tool and die maker and strong UAW member but rejected his politics before I was 18. I served detention in high school for writing an essay on how the Vietnam War was killing America because it was stifling free speech.
However I came to see the problem as exactly what you have so eloquently addressed here, the black and white mindset. No allowance for degrees of anything, you are either a "****ing hippie" or a "warmonger". However it was easy to get laid.
I had my door opened so to speak one week end in Ann Arbor watching but not part of an anti war demonstration. I had long hair, blue jeans and was riding a Triumph 650 Bonneville so naturally I had to be searched and have my ID run by some men with very bad attitudes and very big guns on their belts. I recall they seemed really pissed when it came back clean.
But across the way there were "hippies" chanting ugly **** that had nothing to do with politics or war anymore, it was invented class warfare disguised as freedom marches and all the kids would go home to their white families and color tv's and feel like they were "changing the world". I saw it as driving the wedge deeper, and angrier and an ugly energy in the air that foretold of things being destroyed.
In the middle were these middle aged men with cameras and writing pads, looking confused because they were. None of this fit their idea of "home" when they were chasing Nazi's across Europe. But what I also saw was hope. Clearly no one wast listening on this battlefield and no one would. I knew what I had to do.
Along the way I got an education, but not formal (I have a learning disability and learn in my own way) and read a brief historical classic called "The Prince" by a guy named Machiavelli and shortly after that a book called Fahrenheit 451. Then I re-read 1984 and soon after that I found myself covering national politics at age 21 because a guy died and they needed someone with a pulse.
That's when I learned the only reality in politics is the one you make, a budget shortfall can be either a "disaster our children will have to pay for" or "an investment in our country's future" depending on which side your bread is buttered. And then I learned that in a democracy the only thing between freedom and tyranny and freedom is free and independent free press.
And that is where America is failing. I too get my news [especially about the US] from European and Canadian sources who have no dog in the hunt. And so it is amusing that you would note you had not heard of our "crisis" or the ****ed up way we've responded. I have found that in the US there is no market for anything outside of a narrow bandwidth which people already believe. There is no media outlet that cannot be pre-judged as, as you noted, either 'librul" or "righwing"
