What might it all mean?

[Antisthenes]

Then the game is up, my friend. I fear it is anyways. You fight for your righteous world and I will fight for mine. (-;

As usual, you're probably right, and the game probably is up. That doesn't obviate us of the necessity to go down kicking and screaming, though, so the second thought there sounds like a winner, too. Kicking against the goad is a human quality found in nearly all Americans - it's how we wound up in this nation to begin with. Someone, somewhere, came here to get away from that noisome goad, and now it's in our blood, in the national DNA.

Also in common with immigrants everywhere in all ages, we likely brought too much baggage with us from the Old Country in an effort to retain some of "the comforts of home", and thereby created a new home not all that dissimilar from the one we were escaping to begin with. It's a vicious cycle.

Harking back to a previous post you made, I too have been a lifelong Republican, from at least a few previous generations of Republicans. Before that, most of my forbears were Democrats, but they made a sea change some time after Reconstruction when the parties started shifting sides, and the previously conservative Democratic Party radicalized, while the previously radical Republican party calmed it's young ass down and became more conservative. So, in reality, I suppose I come from a long line of Conservatives, possibly "Libertarians" in modern parlance, independent of whichever party identified as Conservative at the time. So conservative that my grand dad was called "Whig" by all who knew him. Not "A whig", just "Whig", as if it were a proper name.

I disassociated myself from the Republicans during the Bush years, when it became apparent that RINO "Neocons" had taken over the party and started steering it away from the conservative liberty it had previously represented. That was during the Bush years - not W, but his dear old pa GHW. I didn't leave the party so much as it left me, shifting too far to the Left, radicalizing once again as it had been when it was born before the Civil War, and as it came of age in that blood bath, and as it had matured abusing it's iron fist during Reconstruction, before it calmed it's ass down and swapped polarities with the Democrat party.

The election of the Bad Orange Man is what brought me back towards it. He represented the party as it as when I first knew it, supportive of liberty and railing against the Totalitarian status quo that the Republican party was fast developing under the steerage of the Neocons. Republicans were shifting left, Democrats shifting even Lefter, and he brought something of a halt to that shift among Republicans.


I could never vote for a Romney or a McCain - they are - or were in the case of mcCain - fine representations of the very Neocons who hijacked what used to be my party. I'd vote for a rattlesnake first - at least it's honest about what it is.

So, while we may have somewhat similar political histories with the Republican party and our affiliation with it, we're not the same, and different enough to keep life interesting in these discussions! I'm more of a Libertarian or a "Whig", while you appear to be more of a "Radical Republican" of Lincoln's era... yet the "R" still stands there staring at us in both cases, all the same.

.

I do hope America finda calmer seas. We're on the shoals and the ship is in jeopardy. We all have our hopes and ideas of how to bring us out of the straits we find ourselves in and I would be kidding myself if I felt I had any answers.
It's only become recently obvious to me that the lucid amongst the Trump followers are actually railing against a system that they feel stole away with what this Country was built around and not trump himself. He serves as a bulwark against the rising tide of lying, cheating self serving politicians. I get that, I understand the premise of dancing with who brought you to the party. It's only natural to be loyal to someone when you feel they're raging against the machine you abhor so vehemently. It's pragmatic and makes good sense.
My particular take is that the trump handler's and to a lesser degree trump himself saw this frustration and anger with the status quo and realized his way to 270 was to tap into all of that. But by fueling that anger and malcontent he has brought us to the brink and he now revels in it.
He stokes the fires of division, racism and class warfare. I find no solace in a leader that divides it citizenry and sends us into this cesspool we find ourselves in now.
His is a self serving agenda and though he may appeal to those that feel he is making inroads against the career politicians and their machine, he also is not anyone I can follow in good conscience.
He lies, cheats, steals,obsfucates and divides. I can not personally wrap my mind around the idea that the end justifies the means. I find these people repulsive.
I understand that the GOP has made the deal they have because they percieve he is able to forward their agenda. But at what cost? That cost is too high for me. I won't go there.
Between his alienation of half the American public and most of our Allies, his coddling of Dictator's and his illicit deals and his bombastic style, he is that bridge too far for me. So in a meme, yes, ........"orange man bad".
I was born in the Midwest and relocated at a young age to the ancesteral home of The John Birch Society.
Orange County, CA was a bastion of Republican politics and ideals and I was raised in an evironment of believing that honesty, hard work and an can do attitude of bootstrapping ingenuity would get me where I needed to go. I was raised to believe those were Republican Judeo-Christian tenets that would carry me through a successful life.
I believed it all and still do. But then Bush came and the Clintons followed and then the Supreme Court annointed W.
He and 9/11 shifted the western worlds paradigm and I have been jaded ever since. There has been an uneasiness in my psyche because I have watched the disassembly of our Union ever since.
The manipulation of the National mood has been concocted into a perfect cocktail that they serve up at will.
Trump is not only the latest iteration of that, he's also the personification of it.
At this point, I don't believe Civil War is going to improve matters and trump is marching us Pell Mell towards that end. I am more at ease with the status quo than any scorched earth policy. I have children and grandchildren I would like not to have that horror visited upon them.
These keyboard warriors that call for insurrection have no clue what the dogs of war will bring and if they do, they will absolutely rue the day they called them from their hellhole.
You brought forward that we're both Republicans but on opposite ends of the spectrum. Actually, I see you more as a patriot seeking a new political dogma and an entirely new world. I see no remnants of any Republican perspective.
The whigs were for a federally sponsered manifest destiny in a time where there were new frontiers, the only new frontiers now are of the mind. We must make it here and in concert with one another. This new dogma that has ...excuse my insolence, hijacked the Republican Party is much more closely aligned with the know Nothing Party, an earlier group of disgruntled nativists.
I can see where you can imagine some new frontier without dogmatic politicians ruling our destiny, but is this really the leader ypu want to accomplish that goal?
I see him as a George McClellan. A feckless, preening, loudmouth dandy leading us into the fray to be slaughtered.
I absolutely long for the days when American exceptionalism and blissful ignorance allowed us to live lives of happy and quiet desperation. When we worked hard, raised our kids and watched the world go by. Those days are gone so we move through this new minefield and live what the Chinese curse refers to as "interesting times".
I am glad you and I can partake in a civil discourse. I enjoy your ideas and appreciate your strides towards commity. It is a very welcome respite and your amiability is not lost on me.
In the previous thread where you had quoted me, I had tried to speak to another member in regards to my life and education in an effort to provide that I wasn't some illiterate fool that expects the Government to take care of me from cradle to grave and was promptly chastised for being an egotist and elitist. I am neither. But it more often than not is how we hear one another in these polarizing times. Always waiting to be on guard and attack and make wrong.
I'm glad we don't share that relationship, you and I.
But I do see that trump has brought most of our society to that precipice and perhaps above and beyond any other causation, the reason I find "Orange Man Bad".