The personal and the political

When we engage in political discourse in the United States, we confront a fundamental problem.I will outsource much of this discussion to Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, which as you may know is a conservative think tank. First:[H]owever awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the cent er of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.I might add -- as Ornstein does elsewhere -- that the party mobilizes racism, homophobia, misogyny, and other forms of prejudice as a fundamental electoral strategy.Here ' s Gilad Edelman:[R]ecognizing the rising tide of white extremism means grappling with its origins, and that in turn would require American conservatives to deal with their own complicity. The Republican Party is now run by people, including the President and members of Congress, whoendorse conspiracy theories about, for example, George Soros paying Central American migrants to “storm” the United States border and vote in our elections. The party’s fu...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs