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Are We Too Late to Fix Comity

NWRatCon

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There are a number of layers to the question, but I am curious about how different people might answer it. Comity can mean cooperation between branches, or cooperation between parties, or even, cooperation within the parties. The Tea Party movement created a significant split within the Republican Party, which made it largely ineffective for the last 8 or so years. There is currently a schism in the Democratic Party (although, I believe much less significant) between the new class and the leadership. There is a real problem between the White House, and virtually everyone else. The agencies and bureaus are a near disaster (see the last note). Rural and Urban voters are in different worlds. Are the wounds that have been inflicted on our polity by the rancid behavior of our "representatives" too deep to heal? What would it take to repair the damage? I'm going to leave suggestions for later, as I would like to get some reasoned views before I opine further.
 
There are a number of layers to the question, but I am curious about how different people might answer it. Comity can mean cooperation between branches, or cooperation between parties, or even, cooperation within the parties. The Tea Party movement created a significant split within the Republican Party, which made it largely ineffective for the last 8 or so years. There is currently a schism in the Democratic Party (although, I believe much less significant) between the new class and the leadership. There is a real problem between the White House, and virtually everyone else. The agencies and bureaus are a near disaster (see the last note). Rural and Urban voters are in different worlds. Are the wounds that have been inflicted on our polity by the rancid behavior of our "representatives" too deep to heal? What would it take to repair the damage? I'm going to leave suggestions for later, as I would like to get some reasoned views before I opine further.

I don't think it's ever too late for comity.... it's going to take the right kind of leadership to accomplish it, though. I look at the situation now as being similar to the one that existed in the early 1960's. Back then we had the same rancor, the same divisions, and the same feeling that the system just didn't work anymore. But when LBJ came into office, he managed to turn the situation on it's head. He broke the logjam that was keeping all of the pent-up demands for social progress from being realized. How'd he do it? By getting in there and dealing with Congress incessantly. Day-in and day-out he was on the phone and in meetings, wheeling and dealing, twisting arms and brokering compromises to get things done. That's the kind of mentality we need today.

Could we elect an LBJ today? Not a chance in hell.... he couldn't have been elected in 1960, let alone today. The nominating system in both parties is too stacked against a true insider becoming President in his or her own right. We elect the show horses, not the work horses. But if we get a President who is secure enough in himself and in his own abilities - like Reagan - and they picked the right Chief of Staff - like Reagan did with Jim Baker - then it's possible to get an awful lot accomplished in a short amount of time. All it takes is getting the right people in there.
 
What's "comity"? No, it's not Norm Crosby mangling the synonym for humor.
It's really sort of a synonym for a cooperative society voting for their mutual best interests.

Are we willing to cooperate with each other and acknowledge that we all have a lot of mutual best interests and common ground?
Look at the way Republicans have been leading for the past decade and you tell me. Look at the way Trump leads.
Look at the way Mitch McConnell leads.
Then look at the way prisons are run in America.

Yes, PRISONS. Does anyone actually think that the folks who run our prisons WANT all the different races to get along?
That would scare the LIFE out of them, the thought that all the inmates are cooperating together in common cause.
The inmates versus the guards and wardens, it would be their worst nightmare, which is precisely WHY prison management LOVES the fact that inmates are all separated by race, and divided and the fact that they fight each other.

I think you have your answer, because now you understand why things are the way they are right now in this country.
Nothing frightens Trump and the Republican Party more than the thought of conservatives and liberals finding enough common ground to be willing to work together to address the larger issues.
 
What's "comity"? No, it's not Norm Crosby mangling the synonym for humor.
It's really sort of a synonym for a cooperative society voting for their mutual best interests.

Are we willing to cooperate with each other and acknowledge that we all have a lot of mutual best interests and common ground?
Look at the way Republicans have been leading for the past decade and you tell me. Look at the way Trump leads.
Look at the way Mitch McConnell leads.
Then look at the way prisons are run in America.

Yes, PRISONS. Does anyone actually think that the folks who run our prisons WANT all the different races to get along?
That would scare the LIFE out of them, the thought that all the inmates are cooperating together in common cause.
The inmates versus the guards and wardens, it would be their worst nightmare, which is precisely WHY prison management LOVES the fact that inmates are all separated by race, and divided and the fact that they fight each other.

I think you have your answer, because now you understand why things are the way they are right now in this country.
Nothing frightens Trump and the Republican Party more than the thought of conservatives and liberals finding enough common ground to be willing to work together to address the larger issues.

That's a great insight... so we're all prisoners in a cage of our own making? I like the irony.
 
That's a great insight... so we're all prisoners in a cage of our own making? I like the irony.

I don't have to agree with everything you believe or agree with all your views (or anyone's)...I can still respect someone I don't always agree with.
We just have to have some kind of common ground on something somewhere.

This society seems to have lost that, at least temporarily.
 
I don't have to agree with everything you believe or agree with all your views (or anyone's)...I can still respect someone I don't always agree with.
We just have to have some kind of common ground on something somewhere.

This society seems to have lost that, at least temporarily.

I agree with your first statement... I don't know so much about your second, though. I think there is a tendency for people to blindly agree or disagree with a policy position for partisan reasons. I'm still not sure if this comes from laziness or just fatigue, though. We get bombarded by so much information in the run of a day... I think it's almost too much to absorb. So instead of taking the time to try and go out and find the answers for ourselves, a lot of people just tend to parrot the lines they're fed. It's almost like we're rooting for the hometown baseball team or something.
 
I agree with your first statement... I don't know so much about your second, though. I think there is a tendency for people to blindly agree or disagree with a policy position for partisan reasons. I'm still not sure if this comes from laziness or just fatigue, though. We get bombarded by so much information in the run of a day... I think it's almost too much to absorb. So instead of taking the time to try and go out and find the answers for ourselves, a lot of people just tend to parrot the lines they're fed. It's almost like we're rooting for the hometown baseball team or something.
Twitter is absolutely the worst invention for civil discussion invented. As with anything, though, it can be used for good or evil. We're still trying to suss out where it fits.

Here's my hypothesis: There is a convergence of circumstances that have eroded civil discourse, notwithstanding the myriad channels to affect that discourse.

The speed of our connections has actually harmed those connections. Let me give examples: The 24 hour news cycle has shortened and hyperinflated our consumption of information. It has to come faster than it can be vetted, so we get loads of errors in the process. The news is old before you get home from work. Tweets are limited to 144/now 288 characters, overvaluing speed and pithiness, but eroding thoughtfulness and "politeness". Put-downs become the coin of the realm (boy is it prevalent here!) Tweets are to conversation what twerks are to dancing. As a civilization we have been through these cycles before... the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, cable, internet, cell phones. This is a far faster rollout of new technology, but the process is the same. It infects virtually every aspect of our lives. I understand the urge to unplug.

When I was a kid, we played in the yard. My kids played in the family room. They don't have the patience for board games. Newspapers are failing all over the country - too slow.

[Ironically, I posted this post before I had finished the thought process.]
 
Twitter is absolutely the worst invention for civil discussion invented. As with anything, though, it can be used for good or evil. We're still trying to suss out where it fits.

Here's my hypothesis: There is a convergence of circumstances that have eroded civil discourse, notwithstanding the myriad channels to affect that discourse.

The speed of our connections has actually harmed those connections. Let me give examples: The 24 hour news cycle has shortened and hyperinflated our consumption of information. It has to come faster than it can be vetted, so we get loads of errors in the process. The news is old before you get home from work. Tweets are limited to 144/now 288 characters, overvaluing speed and pithiness, but eroding thoughtfulness and "politeness". Put-downs become the coin of the realm (boy is it prevalent here!) Tweets are to conversation what twerks are to dancing. As a civilization we have been through these cycles before... the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, cable, internet, cell phones. This is a far faster rollout of new technology, but the process is the same. It infects virtually every aspect of our lives. I understand the urge to unplug.

When I was a kid, we played in the yard. My kids played in the family room. They don't have the patience for board games. Newspapers are failing all over the country - too slow.

[Ironically, I posted this post before I had finished the thought process.]

I've never considered myself to be "unplugged"... yet I've never used Twitter or Facebook. Maybe that puts me outside of the mainstream, I don't know.... but what I have always been is an infoholic. I pursue information relentlessly. But any infoholic will tell you that you have to be discerning. It's like processing intelligence information. You have your current assessment and you keep a keen eye out for the information that makes to adapt that to changing realities. 99% of the information you receive will be bogus.... the key is adjusting your filters so that the 1% that is both factual and relevant gets through.

You're never going to learn anything by monitoring sources that agree with your current assessment. If you're a liberal, the last thing you should be watching is MSNBC. If you're a conservative, the last thing you should be watching is Fox News. I think, ideally, people should seek to be inquisitive.... reach out for news sources that don't reinforce your views - look for the ones that challenge them. Assess the information they present... can you refute it or not? And if you can't, well, maybe they have a point. That's my concept of comity.
 
We need a new government model to accommodate the sophistication and diversity that the society has evolved to.

The subsisting governing system is rife with inadequacies.

We have evolved to the extent that we have better divisions of knowledge supplying a tremendous population of experts in various fields that could be better utilized in the deliberation of the issues, but our system of a mere two legislative bodies prevents what it would be if we were to designate specific areas of deliberation, and then graduate the ideas through the three levels: local, state, federal.
 
When you have half the nation listening to right wing radio all day long or Fox non-stop you can kiss comity good bye. The election of Trump proves my point. Comity is gone. We are now a locker room of jocks versus nerds.
 
When you have half the nation listening to right wing radio all day long or Fox non-stop you can kiss comity good bye. The election of Trump proves my point. Comity is gone. We are now a locker room of jocks versus nerds.
We are much smarter than you - guaranteed.

You have all the ghetto dwellers, ex-cons, and trailer park trash, who cannot articulate their thoughts, much less, deliberate social problems in a harmonious manner.

Comity comes with education and prosperity.
yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
 
Read an article recently (don't remember where) whose author suggested that the "comity" that existed from 194Os to Watergate (leaving aside McCarthyism, which comity defeated) was a bit of an aberration, that the sort of demonization of the opposition we see today has been the norm since the founding. Some people blame the 60s for the recent lack of comity, some Gingrich, but we lost something, or simply revealed something that was always there. When you thing of comity, remember Amity, the town in Jaws. The shark was always out there.
 
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. . . that the sort of demonization of the opposition we see today has been the norm since the founding.
The modern communications and news media has enhanced our observation of the process, and has also provided the means for the politicians to enhance their campaign strategies - Trump being the prime example of being able to sling more dirt than the "establishment" politicians, because he is not beholden to the establishment's coercion tactics.
 
We are much smarter than you - guaranteed.

You have all the ghetto dwellers, ex-cons, and trailer park trash, who cannot articulate their thoughts, much less, deliberate social problems in a harmonious manner.


yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Here we have the end result of this non-stop barrage of right wing claptrap. Exhibit A your honor.
 
I've never considered myself to be "unplugged"... yet I've never used Twitter or Facebook. Maybe that puts me outside of the mainstream, I don't know.... but what I have always been is an infoholic. I pursue information relentlessly. But any infoholic will tell you that you have to be discerning. It's like processing intelligence information. You have your current assessment and you keep a keen eye out for the information that makes to adapt that to changing realities. 99% of the information you receive will be bogus.... the key is adjusting your filters so that the 1% that is both factual and relevant gets through.

Bear in mind that he appears to be talking about the mainstream of the population, not persons such as yourself who, in your own words, have "never used Twitter or Facebook. Maybe that puts me outside of the mainstream"
Yeah...it does. Yeah...of course YOU understand that "any infoholic will tell you that you have to be discerning. It's like processing intelligence".
But do hundreds of millions of Americans in the mainstream?
No. effing. way. in. Hell.:eek:

You're never going to learn anything by monitoring sources that agree with your current assessment. If you're a liberal, the last thing you should be watching is MSNBC. If you're a conservative, the last thing you should be watching is Fox News. I think, ideally, people should seek to be inquisitive.... reach out for news sources that don't reinforce your views - look for the ones that challenge them. Assess the information they present... can you refute it or not? And if you can't, well, maybe they have a point. That's my concept of comity.

And it's an excellent point but it runs the risk of ignoring human nature. We might not like to admit it but our minds are NOT built to be discerning and we are NOT built to practice critical thinking. We have to be TAUGHT to do so, painstakingly!
It's why whiny liberal kids on college campuses enroll thinking it's going to be a lefty love fest, then suddenly they're shrieking about needing "safe spaces". Nobody bothered to pierce those young skulls filled with mush and tell them in high school to learn to love being uncomfortable for four years.

You think IDEALLY. Good, I always LOVE getting to know idealists. I almost want to be one myself again, but I can't be.
Please understand that I am not trying to be snide or nasty to you, more like "slightly sarcastic" in the hopes it will make you chuckle just a little bit.
Cordelier, you're a good man, but lift your gaze a little and look around you.
If you know what you know, know this:
You are the exception, not the rule.
 
We are much smarter than you - guaranteed.

You have all the ghetto dwellers, ex-cons, and trailer park trash, who cannot articulate their thoughts, much less, deliberate social problems in a harmonious manner.


yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Ghetto dwellers, ex-cons and trailer park trash.
Hmmmm, most ghetto folks either don't vote or, in down South states, have to travel extraordinary distances to do so ever since the SCOTUS gutted most of the Voting Rights Act.
So, cancel out most of the ghetto vote.

Ex-cons? How many of them do you actually think vote?

Trailer trash, that's the Trump vote guaranteed.

So...what ARE you actually talking about?
 
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