Kenneth wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> 
>>   Has this always been so in the US, or is it a modern phenomenon? Just
>> curious (as I don't know too much about US's history).
>>
> 
> I think it has been with us for quite awhile--at least as long as I've been on
> the planet. The strange thing about U.S. politics is that we always seem to have
> a rather polarized two-party system--'right' and 'left' only--whereas many other
> countries have 'multiple voices' in their governments. (U.S. political parties
> with other agendas usually have no chance of being elected here, so out of
> necessity they align themselves with the right or left--which further reinforces
> the two-party system.) And here at least, politics seems to go in repeating
> cycles. (Perhaps it does everywhere, though I don't know.) That is, we have a
> right-leaning president for one or two terms, everybody ends up hating him, then
> we shift to a left-leaning president for awhile, the same thing happens--and so
> on.
> 
> But the recent Bush/Obama polarization seems to be more extreme than I
> remember--at least since the Nixon years.  I think part of that is due to the
> explosion of information sources now available--talk radio, cable TV, internet
> blogging--where practically *everyone* has a voice (you might say an 'equal
> voice') to rant about this or that.  Which tends to inflame passions, and
> further polarize people. When I was growing up, we had three TV channels(!)--and
> that was basically it, aside from newspapers. And the news commentators were
> careful not to choose sides, so to speak. The effect of which was to be a
> calming influence, with a rational tone. How different it all is now!
> 
> Ken
> 
Its not just availability of media. What we have seen is a group of very 
rich people, who **hate** libertarian ideals, when applied to social 
systems, but **love** the ideals, when applied to economies, marrying 
itself to people that actually want to purge their party of any idea or 
concept which doesn't originate out of the days of the inquisition, 
complete with ideas like, "torture works, so lets use it", "the church 
is more important than public opinion", and, "we are always right, 
because we have the might, and if we have to lie, distort other people's 
perspectives, or flat out make up things that don't exist, then claim 
the other side believes in them, that is what we must do, to promote our 
faith". As for your so called polarization... The left, at least the 
party that claims to represent it, if it was in ***any other country***, 
would be considered too conservative to be liberal, and barely liberal 
enough to be "moderates". Every time the right has gone more batshit 
insane, the Democrats have gone, "Ah, well, now we have a problem 
getting things done, lets go more to the right to find 'common ground'." 
If they go any farther, will will have to ship Democrats in from Europe, 
  just to salvage the name.

Truth is, what ever *is* on the true left, they have no party. They vote 
for the least objectionable one, because its the closest to their views, 
more or less, but only in the sense that... Space Balls is *closer* to 
Star Trek, than it is to Alice in Wonderland.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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