Freedom Requires Questioning

While I do think there was fraud in the 2020 Presidential election, I also believe it cannot or will not be proven.  Rand Paul amongst others has pointed out that statistical fraud was found in four states where President Donald Trump lost in the presidential election during supposed “data dumps” in the middle of the night and early morning.  But this, amongst other anomalies and miscounts, and counts of illegal votes, is something that most people, and especially Big Tech, the Mainstream Media, and the Washington Deep State prefer to ignore.  So, that being the will of the people and this being America, that is what I and the rest of the country will do.

This is not the first time my candidate will not be the one inaugurated in January.  But this time it troubles me far more than others.  This election was not just about my candidate winning or losing; it was not really about the candidates at all; rather, it was about the future of America.  I think that too many voters did not understand that.

So, as I move forward, my concern is how do we educate the electorate so that they understand better what was at stake in this election as well as what might be at stake in the future.

I, like many others, have tried and tried to educate people about our system of government, about the truths of socialism or even a significant move toward socialism and its “trickle up poverty” ^* and hopelessness.  I and many others have tried to explain that a narrative, an opinion, an interpretation, that none of those are facts and that to make good decisions about our future we must arm ourselves with facts, not feelings or opinions.  Yet, for the most part that has been to no avail.

I have a friend to tells me that people are not interested in thinking about these things, but that they will sit up and take notice only when they are personally and fiscally affected.  Well, I suspect that those who pay taxes will not have long to wait:  Biden announced that he will nominate Janet Yellen, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, to be his Secretary of the Treasury.  Analysts tell us that will mean personal income taxes will increase, 401ks will drop in value as the new administration and Yellen increase the corporate tax on the corporate stocks in those 401ks, and the cost of gasoline and energy will increase.  That will hit taxpayers and other Americans where it hurts, in the pocketbook.

But is that really enough?  I don’t think so.  In my state we are willing to accept food lines and arbitrary closures of food sources as well as other unsupported mandates issued under the cover of COVID-19.  When people are not willing to question or to think for themselves, then they are likely to accept most anything they are told to do.  So, if they are told that the financial hits they are about to take are for some noble cause, they are likely to accept it without question.

What we need is EDUCATION.  But not just education for our children (which there is no question needs to be improved), but also for the adult population who take their information from media or tech sources that are no longer interested in providing factual and objective information but rather in creating a story or furthering the propaganda of one or another political cause.

For example, over the last 4 years, given the many accomplishments of President Trump, the media could have used their biased rhetoric to laud him and paint him as one of the greatest presidents ever.  Instead, they chose to paint him as the most despicable.  This was done by the ever more biased word and fact choices in the stories they presented as well as in the complete failure to report many of his accomplishments.  For example, how many people know about his criminal justice reform, his raising the economic status of minorities to the all time best, his help for Black colleges, or even his work to negotiate not one, not two, but three peace accords in the Middle East?  And those are just a few of many of which a vast number of Americans are completely unaware.

So, when a particular and totally negative picture of President Trump was created, the people simply accepted it.  And now, the reverse painting occurs as the portrait of Biden is nothing but positive.  And the people simply accept.

It is amazing how many news stories start with an unproven assumption upon which the rest of the story is based.  For example, “Trump’s unfounded statements that  . . . .”  Too many accept stories which begin this way as if the statements were in fact not founded whereas at the time of the statement is made it is nothing more than an opinion/a wish/a narrative.  It is not a fact, and everyone should be asking “On what are you basing the conclusion that the statements to which you refer are unfounded?”

When one bases an argument upon a false or arguable assumption, the whole argument is in danger of falling apart. We used to learn the classic deductive syllogism in our schools, and it became an essential part of our thought structure:

All men are mortal

Socrates is a man

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

We also learned that if the first and second statements were true, the conclusion must be true; therefore, the way to attack a deductive conclusion was to question the two premises:

All swans are white

Jack is a swan

Therefore, Jack is white

Because all swans are not white, Jack is not necessarily white. But coming to this understanding requires questioning the first premise that all swans are white.

All Brand X car batteries die at 20,000 miles

My car battery is Brand X

Therefore, my battery will die at 20,000 miles.

But, perhaps we might want to check to make sure my battery is indeed brand X because if we question and check and find it to be brand Y, then given the information we have we don’t know when it will die.

QUESTIONING.  It is the beginning of being truly informed.  Some of us have forgotten to do that.  Others were never taught.  But unless we start doing it again, start asking questions, we will never be truly informed.  And once we become uninformed and willing to simply accept what we are told, then we lose control over our lives and our very selves.

And to be clear, numerous repetitions of the same assumption or opinion do not make that assumption or opinion a fact or even true.  If you tell me a million times that my black swan Jack is white, that does not make it so.  If you tell me over and over I have a car battery Z so I don’t have to worry that it will die at 20,000 miles, that does not make it so.  I need to question – is it really a Z or is it an X?  And if it is a Z, what facts do we have about when it might die?  Just because I’d like my swan to be white or my battery to last forever, does not mean it can or will be so.  I need to look at facts, not assumptions or desires.

When we let our emotions and feelings rule us, when we become lazy enough to simply accept what we are told because we like what is said, then that is how we lose our country.

Many did not question the negative facts about Trump because they chose to hate him from the moment he was elected.  Others were simply lulled into accepting the total negative picture because it was all they saw and heard on their social media and MSM.  Trump was not perfect, nor was he pure evil.  Like any human and any president, he is complex.  Facts give us a much clearer picture than any narrative.  We need to remember that.

When we get the rosy pictures of Biden and his administration, we need to remember again that no one is all good or all bad.  We need to question what we see and hear.  Just because the preferred media narrative is that everything Biden is good does not mean that we should not question the assumptions we are given.  We always need to demand facts, even when those facts are inconvenient and do not fit our preferred narrative.

We tend to question less when we are in fear and uncertainty.  We look to someone else to provide the certainty and answers to our pain in the same way that children look to parents.  But certainty and safety can become a prison.  Questioning is the only true way to alleviate uncertainty and fear.  It is the only way to retain the true ability to control one’s own destiny.   

If we stop questioning it means that we are leaving the course of our future to those who control the narrative.  We are not children and I, for one, do not want to become like children to an all-powerful government/Big Tech/Media that makes my decisions and creates my narrative for me.  Therefore, I will continue to question. 

Question narrative.  Question facts.  Question support.  Question interpretations of facts.  Question opinions.  Simply Question.

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*I don’t know if the term “trickle-up poverty” has been previously used to characterize socialism, but it is definitely appropriate.  I discovered it in this well thought out and well explained piece by the CEO of Whole Foods. LINK 

 

The New Regime

I do not use the word “regime” lightly.  It is defined as: “a government, especially an authoritarian one.”

Now, I admit I was a Trump supporter and still strongly support his numerous accomplishments for our country and his agenda that puts our country and all of its people first; but, like any good American (and unlike most Democrats in 2016) I will accept the duly certified president, even if that is Joe Biden.  I will likely not agree with his policies or his actions, but it is my responsibility as an American to support the office and the institution of President, even when I disagree strongly with the person occupying that office.

So, what do I expect from a Biden presidency?  First, I do believe we will have some of that “nice” that some people voted for.  That is, it seems that Biden will fill key positions with typical career politicians – the ones who are really good with words and eloquent speeches.  The ones who hide behind those nice words but never tell you the full truth of what they are doing or what is going on.  The ones who think that you, the American people, don’t really need to know.   They will be nice and polite as they stab America in the back. 

The news media will cooperate with the Democrats in giving us the appearance of nice.  While they worked to make every word of President Trump into a racist/homophobic/authoritarian/hateful pronouncement; while they investigated every move he made, every obviously sarcastic tweet; while they turned every day of Trump’s presidency into some sort of earth shattering and existential crisis; while they distorted his words and any facts that did not fit their narrative; while they conducted, advocated for, and supported every unfounded allegation; despite this behavior regarding President Trump, when it comes to Biden the press will treat him as they have throughout his campaign: not only not asking the difficult questions, but suppressing any evidence of corruption or malfeasance.

So, sure, it will be “nice.”  Nice words.  Nice news coverage.  But no reality.  We the American people will not see what is really going on.  We will be enveloped in “nice” and lulled into unthinking acceptance as the Democrats move forward with their plans for America’s “reset” which I fear will ultimately be its decline. 

And those who would speak out will of course be silenced.  Biden has already selected for key positions at least one and likely more who would severely limit if not do away with our First Amendment rights.  Those who propose “hate speech laws” are really proposing the sort of limited speech that we see in countries such as the former Soviet Union, or today’s China, or most any authoritarian dictatorship or socialist regime.  Of course, if no one can speak up or question anything, then on the surface everything looks nice.

So let’s return to that word “regime.”  Its further definition includes: a system or planned way of doing things, especially one imposed from above.  That of course requires big government, something that is clearly a part of the Democrat plan. 

A regime also involves the characteristic that those in power believe they know better than the masses what is good for them.  Those in power, in control of the regime, tell the rest of us what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot think or believe, and ultimately who we can or cannot be. 

Don’t believe me?  Look at the history of any socialist regime.  Most of us have some idea of the Soviet Union and its repressive regime.  But remember that the revolution that brought it about was one to bring equality and a better life to the workers.  Actually Lenin was quite the idealist about Marxism – until the revolution was won, and he along with others in power decided that they could not leave decisions to those uneducated workers; instead, it was necessary for the elite, the state, to take away their individuality and tell them how they must behave.  Meanwhile, those in power were able to become more and more corrupt as the people’s suffering grew and grew.

Do you really think the socialist viewpoint is any better here?  For about 50 years (about the amount of time Biden was a “public servant”) we had all sorts of social programs built in the socialist mode to help a variety of groups identified by characteristics such as sex and color.  What did these programs do for those for example stuck in inner city squalor?  The answer is nothing, at least nothing positive.  Instead they took away family and hope and individuality and motivation and self-respect.  They created a permanent underclass – an underclass dependent on the state and those in power and therefore a permanent voting bloc to help those in power retain their power. 

For the 3 years prior to the onset of Covid, this began to change as there were jobs and better economic conditions and hope for minorities and those stuck in inner city squalor.  That hope does not happen with the dependence created by socialism.  During those 3+ years the Democrats opposed everything, every program or other action that made that betterment possible. 

That is telling.  It is clear evidence that the Democrat “concern” for those less fortunate is not really a concern for them, but instead reflects a desire for maintaining them as nothing more than a useful underclass.  Democrat socialist-like programs allow them to talk a good story while walking actions that do something very different.

The new regime is I fear one of smoke and mirrors.  Put eloquent words at the front.  Create a cabinet and other leadership positions based not on substance but on superficial characteristics (color, race, heritage, sex, physical condition, etc.).  It may look diverse and pretty, but personally I would rather have people selected based on substance and skill.  That might result in the same pretty picture, it might not.  But rather than looking right, shouldn’t we be looking for people based on criteria that assure us they can actually perform the job?   Using that substantive criteria, rather than superficial appearances, would certainly be better for America.

Many of those on Biden’s short list for key positions are avowed socialists or have taken a variety of anti-American stands in the past.  But the pretty picture presented makes people forget to look beneath the surface, to question.  And that is exactly what an authoritarian regime wants and needs:  people who do not question.

Of course, we all know that the Democrats are well versed in creating smoke and mirrors about their actions and those of their opponents.  They pull allegations and accusations out of hats (see Russia collusion or Kavanaugh MeToo accusations for example); they know these things are not true, are often manufactured or ignore actual and key facts, but they use them for nothing more than to assert and secure their power.

The great reset or whatever the Democrats are calling it today is not going to be good for America or its people.  The Democrats, with their eloquent words and their socialist dreams think they know better than the rest of us who we are, what we are, and who we should be.  They coach us to give them power by feeding us dreams of the great utopian equality and niceness of socialism.  But history tells us that once socialism comes to full power that niceness does not last long and the equality that is placed upon the masses is one of hopelessness as they struggle daily for their mere existence.

A good authoritarian regime requires that those in power be self-interested, care more about their own power than they do about the people over whom they assert control.   I think the Democrats certainly fit the bill.  They also have the necessary skill of being able to soothe the people into not noticing what is going on around them and hence there is no questioning of their narrative.  Personally, I do not look forward to the new regime, no matter how prettily and nicely those in power and the media paint it.

 

Why Shutdowns are Bad for Democracy

No, it is not the mask mandate, although it might be – we don’t know.  And that is one of the problems.

We have governors and now a presumptive president-elect who make proclamations about COVID-19 and masks and shutdowns for political reasons but which are based on half-truths and selected science.  The result is that we are being put into a mental slumber of unthinking in which we accept without question what we are told.

The mainstream news media, which seems to be where most people are getting their information, has an agenda.  That agenda for the last year has been to convince people that President Trump was getting it wrong about COVID-19.  

Government cannot fix everything.  The Trump administration has and with the vaccine continues to put a dent in the virus and our ability to treat those infected, but no government can cure it or make it go away.  Yet Democrats, rather than applaud successful efforts, choose to set up roadblocks and blame the President as if he had created the virus and intentionally set it upon us.  And governors continue to tell us that they would fix everything if only we would obey their dictates.

There are studies supportive of shutdowns and masks, but there are also serious scientific studies that question the usefulness of such measures.  See for example THIS 

Similarly, rather than pay attention to the scientific studies of the effectiveness of the vaccine, the MSM  jumped on the bandwagon when Kamala Harris proclaimed that the vaccine could not be trusted because it was developed during Trump’s presidency.  Now, when we have two vaccines showing 94 and 95 percent effectiveness, the narrative continues that it may not be trustworthy because it was developed during the Trump administration.

And there are the shutdowns and the mask mandates which come and go like the wind and are always riddled with irrational exceptions. 

Let’s remember that last spring we had a 3-week shutdown to SLOW THE SPREAD.  Not to completely eradicate the virus.  We always expected it would continue to be with us.  But now when the numbers go up in the slightest, we have to shut down all over again because apparently somehow we believe that some government official can just make it completely go away if we only do what he or she says.

About those numbers:  generally, the numbers given to justify government mandates are not complete.  Do you know if deaths due to COVID-19 but with underlying conditions were really caused by COVID-19 or by the underlying condition?  How is that determination made?  Are there incentives to count it as COVID-19?

What about infection rates?  Do more tests result in a higher or lower overall infection rate?  What about false positives and false negatives?  How many are there?  Why?  How do they affect the rates?

And the masks.  Did you know there are significant studies by credible scientific groups that deny the effectiveness of masks?  Why do these studies not get equal time?   Did you know that a study performed by the military resulted with a lockdown showing slightly greater infection rate than non-lockdown? (LINK )

Arbitrary and ever-changing shut down and similar rules can and do take a heavy negative toll on the populace.  Not only do small businesses and their employees take the brunt of economic devastation, but also the people in general suffer in ways that many would find worse than the virus. 

The repressive actions by many state governors seem to ignore such things as increased depression and suicide, increased spousal and family abuse, decline of academic and athletic training and skills at K-12 schools and colleges, the loss of a will to live in the elderly isolated in elder care homes, etc.

But far more catastrophic than the individual and specific events that we can point to is the effect that the shutdowns have on the soul of every individual and ultimately of our country as well.

Isolation is not natural for humans.  Sitting at home, even working at home, lacks the stimulation that occurs when we go out into the world.  That stimulation might be talking with a colleague at the coffee machine, or shopping, or having lunch with friends, or discussing any number of topics in a seminar or playing games inside or outside with friends or strangers or any number of the things humans typically do (or did before they were instilled with COVID-19 fear and threatened with lockdowns).

When one is left without real stimulation, with hours of essentially nothing to do except scroll through social media or stream videos on TV, one becomes sluggish in both body and mind.  An inertia sets in.  I can’t help but think of the description of “mental slumber” found in The Golovlyov Family by Saltykov-Shchedrin: “As she gazed she would think of nothing . . . .  She merely gazed and gazed, until a senile drowsiness began to hum in her ears again, veiling the fields, churches, villages and that distant trudging peasant in the mist.”

The Russian word for such inertia is oblomovshchina [Обломовщина] from the character in Goncharov’s Oblomov who spends the whole day just dreaming and lying on the couch.  In his book Dead Souls, Gogol also referred to such “lie-a-beds.”

We have this soul-deadening inertia being cultivated by our various governors and their lockdowns.  It is not healthy for us or for our democracy.

As any good communist, socialist, or Democrat will tell you, “never let a crisis go to waste.”  COVID-19 arriving on our shores was a crisis.  And the Democrats had no intention of letting it go to waste and continue to use it to suit their agenda.

They begin by generating a fear so great that it cripples logical thought.  Now yes, as with any dangerous thing, including a virus, a little fear or caution is a good thing.  But the fear mongering of the media and the left goes far beyond that as they created and continue to promulgate fear that reaches the level of hysteria about the virus. 

With hysteria and its emotional and illogical mates, comes a huge uncertainty.   Humans do not like uncertainty.  They look for something or someone that can provide certainty to their lives.

The state governors and other politicians make it clear that you must listen to them asserting that they are the only ones who have and understand all the information, and, being in a state of fear many people are willing to listen and accept without question.  They think the mandates will provide them the certainty they seek.

They do not question what that information is.  They do not question why it leads to the mandate being imposed.  They do not question what other information is available.  The people just blindly follow, the well instilled fear being that if they do not then they will certainly die. 

The people are learning to follow blind and often inconsistent and irrational mandates.  They are learning to accept what they are told without question.  They are learning to give up their freedom without question.

This does not mean that everything we are told is inaccurate or not useful, but to accept it without question is the very antithesis of democracy. 

Democracy requires a mind that is awake, that is able to question and to seek out all the evidence, that is energized by debate about information and policy.  It requires a soul that believes in itself and is self-reliant and innovative.  

The mental slumber in which the unquestioned mandates place us is the enemy of democracy, of free and fulfilling lives, of the true happiness and health that comes from being in charge of your own soul.

So, yes, COVID-19 is dangerous and even deadly for some.   For others it is less so.   We are human.  We can think.  We can understand the facts and evidence if it is fully provided to us.  We can take the precautions necessary for who we each are and can do what is necessary to help protect our neighbors. 

We do not need mandates that that are filled with holes like a slice of Swiss cheese.  We have minds and it is time that we started to use them, because if not, the “cure” for COVID-19 will be the death of us all.

 

 

The Silence is Deafening

 Actually, the silence has been deafening for the last 4 years, and perhaps the 8 before that.  So to what silence am I referring?  The silence of truth and the failure to acknowledge hypocrisy.  And the silence of those who have been intimidated and are afraid to speak. 

Let’s start with today and work backwards.  Actually, let’s start with Biden’s call for Unity.

When Biden called for Unity, nearly every MSM publication had an identical headline:  Time to Heal.  (That the headlines were so identical suggests that the press is not as independent as it may claim). 

Just days after that headline, a large group of Trump supporters marched peacefully in DC for honest and fair elections. 

There is no question that the march was peaceful.  But, as the march ended and evening descended, Leftist groups including Antifa and BLM (both supporters of Biden and Democrats) began violent attacks on those peaceful supporters, including elderly, families, and children.  Their stated purpose was to silence and cancel those holding views that are pro-Trump, pro-honest elections, pro-fact.

Did the MSM report this?  No.  Or when they did it was just something like: “Left and Right engaged in some conflict” or simply “The march was marred by conflict.”  Certainly no coordinated headlines as in Biden’s call for unity (or perhaps the coordination was simply not to report).  There was silence.

Did Biden condemn the violence propounded by his supporters?  No.  He ignored it completely.  Silence.   [Update: Late today a Biden spokesperson stated that "President-elect Biden continues to denounce all acts of violence" but did not name Antifa or BLM, the perpetrators of the violence against the marchers this past weekend. I do not see this as any sort of real condemnation of the divisive acts by the Left, but rather it continues the silence that is inconsistent with the call for unity.]

Did Biden’s voters who had told us they voted for him because he would bring civility and unite us say that this was not what they voted for?  No.  Silence.

This is not only the height of hypocrisy.  It tells me that in the minds of Biden and the Left that “Unity” means we all must hold our tongues and not speak if we disagree with them.  That is not America or the democracy or free speech that is our American Right.  This is an America without tolerance and where unapproved voices are silenced.

And it is not just the “unity” lie.  The hypocrisy is everywhere.  Before the election there was silence on Biden’s likely use of his office as VP to further his son’s financial benefits with Ukraine.  There was the ignoring of the charges of sexual harassment (quite a contrast to the way the Left treated the false charges against Justice Kavanaugh!).  There is the fact that Biden’s cancer foundation does virtually nothing with the money it raises except pay salaries to its employees.  All met with media silence.  Anyone who brought forth the actual evidence of these things was ostracized as some sort of nut.  Inconvenient facts – silenced.

But let’s look at the days post-election.  Besides the false unity appeal, we have seen several lies pass Joe Biden’s mouth, with no acknowledgement of that from his supporters who have been eager not only to point out every actual misstatement by the President, but even to make up many more.

Joe Biden told us during the debates that he would not declare victory until the election results were certified.  He lied.  He promised a middle of the road, not far left-wing administration, but look at his appointments thus far and projected ones – many far left, proponents of socialism, etc.  He lied.  Those who try to raise these and other lies are silenced; the press does not report them.  Silence.

But Biden is not alone in his lies.  He has the media at his back.  How many times has the media, in reporting that Donald Trump has failed to concede, told us there is no evidence of fraud.  Yet there are hundreds of pages of affidavits from poll workers, along with piles of credible evidence suggesting there are also piles of illegal votes that were counted.  That is not reported.  Silence.

No, the result of this election, declared by the media (who now seems to be running the country), is unlikely to change.  But that does not mean we should turn a blind eye to fraud, silence even the suggestion that it occurred, and silence any attempt to investigate so that it does not again occur.

In an essay, the whole of which is well worth reading, Caroline Glick states:

“If we learned nothing else from the election campaign and its aftermath, we learned American democracy is in crisis.

The media is the first force responsible for this crisis. For the past four years, all major U.S. television networks and national newspapers have dedicated themselves not to reporting news, but to defining the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. Big Tech firms—Facebook, Google and Twitter, in particular, having amassed powers the KGB could only have dreamed of—serve as the enforcers of those boundaries.”             

Entire article can be found here LINK 

I come back to my previous blog about the Nice vote.  The media convinced many that Biden would bring us nice – civil discourse in which we would all get along.  They believed the media propaganda that they could trust Joe and he would simply wave his magic wand and we would all get along.  They voted for that in their naïve belief that the job of a president is creating national civility rather than the actual domestic and foreign duties of a president.  No one corrected their misperceptions.  Silence.

But, regardless of what those nice voters thought, what this weekend march and Leftest violence shows us is that in the minds of the left and its handmaiden media, getting along simply means allowing only one voice. That is the worst kind of silence.

The nice voters and the naïve voters failed by blindly trusting the media.  Ms. Glick also writes:

“Nearly all the stories about Trump and his supporters have been negative for the past four years. Consequently, while most Americans never heard that Trump conceived and implemented an entirely new foreign policy doctrine that has met more success than any adopted since the end of the Cold War, all Americans know that the media expect them to believe Trump is a racist. They know that the media expect right-thinking Americans to hate Trump and his supporters, and admire his opponents, from Nancy Pelosi to Black Lives Matter (BLM).”

I would add to this that nearly all the stories about President Obama were positive and we see the same approach being taken toward Biden.  The press does not report the negative, and actually, most of the positive is not hard-hitting journalism, but fluff – for example, what pets Joe will bring to the White House – fluff about fluff.  Silence on real facts of real substance.

Yet too many have been silenced into thinking that if they do not hold the voice that the media instructs there is something wrong with them.  They are afraid to speak out, to even think or question what the media, the voice of the Left, tells them.  They are silenced, and the silence is indeed deafening. 

But more than deafening, is the sad truth that without critical thought and questioning, without voicing or hearing opposing viewpoints, eventually those viewpoints cease to exist.  With the silencing if different voices comes the destruction of the individual mind.  Tolerance of opposing views, what used to be referred to as the Loyal Opposition, is an essential piece of democracy.  Yet the Left is doing its best to silence that, and Biden seems inclined to just stand by and let them.

I turn again to Caroline Glick (and again I encourage everyone to read her entire article):

“The consequences of this media and Big Tech tyranny are disastrous for the health of American democracy. Americans know they are expected to act like the citizens of the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union. The media will tell them what they can say, and social media will enforce the media's dictates.  And like the denizens of the USSR, Americans haven't stopped thinking as a result of this tyranny. They have just stopped telling people what they think. 

“The media's abandonment of journalism and their hatred of half of American society, as well as the Democrats' embrace of a totalitarian theory of race and American secular sin as an organizing principle, are unmooring America from its democratic, pluralistic anchors. American society is moving into a post-democratic reality. And if action isn't taken to restore those anchors, American society as a whole will suffer.”

I actually fear it may be worse – I fear that too many Americans have indeed just stopped thinking.  They seem to find it easier to just accept.  Do as told, think as told, say as told.  Just shuffle along without any brain and ultimately without any soul. 

Americans, all Americans, need to think if this is where they really want to go.  If not, they need to once again not only start thinking, but start questioning.  And most importantly, they need to start speaking. 

The fear of speaking may be great – you may lose friends, you may be outcast, you may be laughed at, you may even be attacked.  But anyone who wishes to enjoy the many benefits of such traditional American things as freedom of thought and speech and assembly and religion, who believes that tolerance of alternate views, even those with which one strongly disagrees, is a good thing and a healthy thing for democracy, those people need to speak out.

The silence needs to end – that is the action that is necessary to restore the anchors of our American democracy.  From Joe Biden who promised us something different and who refuses to speak out for tolerance and truth, and from the voters who voted for civility but are now being betrayed not only by breaches of campaign promises, but by acceptance of violence against opposition speech.  

But the silence from those who are still thinking and questioning but are not speaking, that is the most dangerous silence of all.  No one should tolerate their voice being silenced.  Rather than silence, we need to hear the cacophony of the many individual and diverse views that exist in America.

 

The Nice Vote

I hate to keep harping on fraudulent elections, but before I get to the main point of this post I have one final thought on the election which I present in the first paragraph below.  The rest of this blog addresses what I refer to as the “nice vote.”

Elections and Integrity

I know that even if fraud is officially found it is unlikely at this point that it will change the outcome – in large part because once illegal votes have been cast it becomes next to impossible to determine which those votes were and hence impossible to remove them – but I am appalled that so many Americans seem not to care if there even was any fraud.  Even one illegal vote dilutes the strength of every legal vote.  If there are huge amounts of illegal votes as it appears there were in this election, then the essential right to vote of all Americans has been tampered with.  This is not a political issue but an American issue that goes to the very core of our democracy.  Every American, regardless of their political leanings, should demand a full investigation and demand safeguards so that from this point forward we can all trust in the fairness and honesty of our elections.  Many people don’t want the acrimony that may bring, but sometimes democracy is not “nice” which brings me to the main point of this post.

The Nice Vote

If the currently questionable results are nonetheless the same as they would have been if this were an election of unquestionable integrity, then I think that the reason that Trump lost is due to the people who voted for nice.  He got more minority votes than in 2016, but most Democrats and Republicans unlikely changed their votes, so it had to be the nice vote.

What do I mean by that?  Here is the reason given by many people, both Democrats and Republicans, whom I personally know and generally respect, for why they voted for Biden:  They wanted to express their hope for a kinder and more civil country.  These people, despite reservations about the dangers of big government, or reservations about Biden’s past record and corruptions, despite praise for Trump’s foreign policies and his accomplishments toward peace in the Middle East, despite their approval of how he was able to handle and improve the economy and the economic status of minorities, despite these acknowledgements and more, these people simply voted for nice.

Now, I happen to think they made a big mistake.  But I also think that they were not even seeing what was right before their eyes.  While Biden claims to be a nice guy, he is not.  He is a career politician and with that comes the self-interest and lying that is a common part of that role.  While he says he is a straight shooter, he is not straight with the American people. 

As I listen to Biden and his unauthorized transition team make more and more pronouncements about their plans, I become more and more concerned for America.  I wonder if the nice vote is beginning to realize what they voted for, and if they are beginning to have some sort of buyer’s remorse.

I also realize that if one is going to vote based on nice, then they really have very little understanding of our country and how it works.  Most of those I know who voted for nice live outside cities in comfortable suburbs.  They are of the type often referred to as “soccer moms” (though some are not moms, and some are men).  They have not experienced firsthand what it is like to live in a city, either as one of the privileged or as one of the underclass. 

Violence is likely something that is not part of these nice voters’ regular lives, although they see it on TV and therefore from a media perspective – a narrative, not a reality.  They have the things they need, including material goods and things like healthcare.  They feel badly for those who don’t, but they themselves do not experience it. 

Looking from afar they are told how those sorts of problems should be dealt with rather than having any real understanding of those problems.  So, they vote for what they feel is nice, be it nicer, more sophisticated verbiage, or nice sounding narratives about the future that a candidate will create.

But nice is not a requirement for any of the systems of our government.  And indeed, nice is often ineffective.  If we accept for the purpose of discussion the proposition that Biden is nice, then for 47 years his niceness was totally ineffective in getting anything done for the country. If anything, many of the programs his nice verbiage supported were more harmful than beneficial to our country or certain groups of people within our country.   Former President Obama made nice speeches, but his actions tore this country apart as he built and strengthened a politics of identity. 

Yet President Trump, with his rough and often acrimonious words, accomplished so many things that the nice talkers have only talked about for years:  prison and criminal justice reform, return of economic hope for inner city minorities, better quality of life for most Americans, more opportunities for all, but especially minorities, return of respect around the world, working to end foreign wars and bringing troops home; improved trade agreements that are fair to our own country, the list goes on.  He made and kept his campaign promises.  He followed the law and the Constitution.  And in getting it done he was often not nice. But his actions benefited our entire nation.

And that is what a President is supposed to do.  Support our laws and our Constitution.  Work hard, but within our system.   Put our country first.  Work to make things better for all of our people, not just those belonging to favored identity groups.  

There is no requirement of nice.  And indeed, no one can mandate nice because, at least in this country as long as we retain our Constitutional protections, people have the right to their own views and to speak their own words, and sometimes that is not nice.

The nice voters have in my mind been fooled by pretty words.  Pretty promises – we will all be civil and we will all get along and the government will take care of everyone in a kind way.  In the words of Thomas Sowell:  “Mystical references to ‘society’ and its programs to ‘help’ may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.”

Listening to the plans being put forth by Biden and his handlers since he was declared the presumptive winner tell us that the nice that these people voted for will be a large government in charge of our lives and a diminishment if not loss of our freedoms, especially those set forth in the First and Second Amendments of our Constitution. They voted for a loss of our nationhood and a movement toward the New World Order.  They voted for loss of tolerance for individuality as we move toward a society where even our thought will be under government control.

What they voted for may sound nice, we may not hear so many acrimonious words (though I doubt that), or they will only be spoken in secret behind closed doors, but what they really voted for is not what I would call nice.  What they voted for is a march down the path toward full out socialism and all the evils and pain and suffering that brings.   

I think the nice voters made a huge mistake.  I suspect it will not take them long to realize that.  But it may nonetheless be too late.   God save us from nice!

Real Elections Require Honesty and Fairness and Sometimes Patience

 Elections.   Most every country has them, but they are not all the same.  In some countries we know that despite the people going to polls to vote that the result has been predetermined by those in power.  We laugh when leaders like Putin “amazingly” receive an almost unanimous vote. 

We laugh, because we know that in America that doesn’t happen – we vote, our votes are counted, and we the people decide the winner.  We have faith in that.  At least until now.

But now only a fool would think that there were no irregularities in this election.  Whether that changed the result, we will likely never know.  But it cannot help but change the faith of the people in our elections, both now and in the future.

But this is not just a problem with the fraud itself, it is a problem with the way we are reacting to it.  And that is what I want to address here.

First, there are credible acts of fraud, sworn affidavits by numerous poll workers, a small number of whistle blowers who were poll officials unattached to either party, obituaries from a year or more ago of people who seemingly also cast votes in this election, etc. etc.  The MSM does not report this because it does not fit their narrative.  The credible allegations by Republicans are regularly referred to by the press as “unsubstantiated” and “unproven.”  Well, of course they are at this point only allegations – that is why the Republicans ask for investigations that would prove or disprove what are credible and sworn statements of fraud.

By way of example of what is being alleged and some of the affidavits, here is a link to the complaint filed in Wayne County, Michigan (LINK). It is long.  The affidavits are near the end.  Its allegations are less egregious than what is being found and asserted in Pennsylvania and Georgia and perhaps other states.  

As I write this, the Georgia Secretary of State has announced a state wide hand recount.  The reason for the recount is to create trust in the ultimate result.  Yet even as it reports that announcement the press continues to call the allegations unmerited and essentially characterize them as nothing more than sore losing.  

Any citizen who truly cares about free and fair elections should be concerned.  And that concern should go far beyond the results in Trump v. Biden.  Because if we cannot trust our elections, if the identities of the dead are being stolen, if legitimate votes are not being counted while illegitimate ones are, then we are all being disenfranchised.  And we will never again be able to take the results of our elections seriously.

Any realist will acknowledge that no election is fraud free; there are always some dead people who vote.  But the problem this year was the huge amount of mail in ballots.  The mass mail in balloting of this year must be distinguished from absentee balloting which requires a request for a ballot as well as other verification procedures in order for one to cast a vote by mail.  But general mail in balloting has no such protections.  The following quote from The Kafka Election: Finding a Way Out of the Maze  (LINK) lays out the problem with frightening clarity:

          “When you vote in person, you first make an active choice to vote, confirm your identity as a registered voter to a poll worker, then mark your ballot privately but in the presence of other people, and finally hand it off to a poll worker who scans it directly into a vote-counting machine while you watch. In other words, you establish your legal right to vote and have a secure chain of custody of your ballot until it is scanned, which you yourself participate in.         

        None of those steps is present in mail balloting. You are a passive recipient of a ballot, your identity is assumed rather than confirmed, you may be marking your ballot under pressure of either family members or strangers, and you send the ballot to an anonymous election worker through any number of insecure methods of transmission. You have no assurance that your vote has been counted, and what’s worse, you may not even be a participant in your own vote being cast in your name.  

           The most important thing to remember about mail ballots is that once they are separated from their secrecy envelope, they are completely unidentifiable. They may have come from legal voters, or they may not have. They may have come in the mail, or they may have come in the soda delivery truck. They may have come one at a time, or they may have come 100,000 at a time.

                         And no one will ever know.”

We should all remember that near the end of the first presidential debate, moderator Chris Wallace asked Biden if he would “pledge not to declare victory until the election is independently certified.”  Joe Biden answered, “yes.”  Wallace then asked, “Will you urge your supporters to stay calm while the vote is counted, and will you pledge not to declare victory until the election is independently certified?” “Yes,” answered Biden.  (See C-Span video of that debate HERE.  This exchange happens about an hour and a half in)

Yet Biden, now proclaimed by the media and his party to be our next president, despite no certifications, and with legitimate ongoing challenges and recounts, does nothing to urge calm or patience.  Rather, he and his handlers and supporters mock the Republicans as simply sore losers for being concerned about the validity and fairness of one of the most importance processes of our democracy – the people’s vote.

Biden and the rest of America should review the Constitution.  The Electors must vote before we have a President-elect and that vote must be certified.  That is scheduled to occur in December.  That has not happened yet this year, so while we can have a presumptive or predictive President-elect, we legally and Constitutionally do not have an actual President-elect.  And the one who claims to hold that title should be the first one to understand that and to clarify our Constitution to us.  Afterall, the actual president must take an oath to uphold that very same Constitution.

Indeed, that is what makes us different from the countries whose obvious manipulated elections we laugh at.  We are a country of laws, not of emotion and mob rule.  We are governed by laws, not media.  We the people are the ones in control, not the ones who scream loudest or who have the best emotional propaganda.  To quote the current presumptive winner, “c’mon man.”  And by that I mean, c’mon, stop pretending and follow the facts and the law.  If Biden and his supporters really believe their victory is secure, then why not take the time to prove it?

As the above explanation of mail in ballot fraud demonstrates, we will never know what the true result of legitimate votes in this election was because once the illegal vote is put into the tabulating machine it becomes unidentifiable.  Even if we were able to say there had been a precise number of fraudulent ballots cast, we would not be able to tell specifically which of those votes were the fraudulent ones. 

So, as the Democrats now assert, it is unlikely that even if the challenges successfully show significant and possibly result changing voter fraud, we will nonetheless likely not see a change in the current narrative proclaimed to us by the media.

Whether any fraud was conceived and designed at some broad level with some master plan, or whether it was simply a result of a number of poll workers suffering from the hatred of Trump Derangement Syndrome, it doesn’t matter.  The fact is, the mass mail in allows it to happen and it is next to impossible, once it has happened, to determine for whom the actual legal votes were cast.

But that does not mean we should just ignore what went on.  It does not mean that we should just let the media decide for us when they decide that the time is right.  It does not mean that we should let the media and the presumptive winning party simply acclimate us to that win so that we accept it as we do so much of what we hear repeated to us on our various media sources. 

It does not mean that we should not demand, both now and in the future, that every legal vote be counted and that only legal votes be counted.  It does not mean that we should accept, or worse participate in, condemnation of someone who with credible evidence challenges election results.

Yet, that is what is happening.   We are being encouraged to just forget this and move on.  The presumptive winner, who said he would be the president for all Americans, seemingly does not care enough about those Americans to keep his word or to ensure for them that these as well as future results will be fair and honest.  That tells us a lot, doesn’t it?

Mass mail-in balloting was widespread in this election, and as predicted it was fraught with fraud.  Yet now the people are used to the convenience of mail in.  They will want to use it again and regularly.  If we do not fix its problems now, we will never again have an election result that the people can trust and believe in.  And every single American should care about that.  Even if this election provides you with the results you like, that does not mean that future fraud will do the same.

We need to return to elections that we can be proud of and that we can trust.  That requires patience.  It requires support for the investigation of legitimate and credible allegations of fraud.  It requires not letting the media decide who won.   Only when we know that the results are honest can the winner truly claim victory and delight in the result and only then can those who lost know that they were not cheated out of victory.  And what is wrong with waiting to prove an honest result?

 

Unity Requires Tolerance and Other Post Election Thoughts

So it is now 5 days post-election and we still do not have an official winner, although at the moment Joe Biden is the presumptive winner.  The media is treating him as the winner and people are beginning to accept that, though that does not necessarily make it so.  If it turns out that he is indeed the official winner, I hope that everyone will accept that just as I hope everyone will do so if the tide turns in Trump’s favor.  

In the meantime, several different but related thoughts and issues are rolling around in my head and I will discuss some of them here.

First, let’s understand that in this country, accepting a victor does not mean agreeing with all the policies or views of that victor or his party.  In America we accept the vote of the people and support the legitimate office holder, but we retain our right to hold our own views and beliefs, and to speak out both for and against various political policies.  If we do not like the policies of the chosen winner, we can work to see someone with different policies elected in the future.  The win of one side does not make the other side’s views wrong nor require them to alter their individual beliefs.

Last night Mr. Biden gave a speech in which he essentially claimed victory and called for unity in the nation.  A nice thought, but I don’t see how we can take that call seriously when we still have the leaders of his party, people like  former President Obama, his wife Michelle, the presumptive Vice President Harris, Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, Rep. Cortez, and many others, along with most of the Democrat voters continuing to throw a variety of ad hominem attacks against the more than 70 million who voted for President Trump. 

Mrs. Obama just yesterday called that 70 million plus racist.  Others assert they are uneducated.  Some call for the identification of all Trump voters so that they can be “educated.”  Others yelled F**k USA at groups of Trump supporters singing the National Anthem after the press had declared Biden the winner.  Hypocrisy is everywhere when we see such things as Biden supporters celebrating without masks or social distancing when Trump and his supporters were regularly criticized by Biden and the Democrats for the same behavior.

The speeches, but even more so the actions of Mr. Biden and the Democrats seem to make it clear that there will be no tolerance for views of which they disapprove.  And real unity requires tolerance of viewpoints that are not one’s own.  So I see Biden’s words as nothing more than that – pretty words of a politician. 

Another thought is about the election challenges.  We should remember that Mr. Biden and the Democrats all applauded Stacey Abrams when she challenged election results in 2018.  Yet today they condemn the President and the Republicans for their challenges based on much stronger evidence than what was held by Ms. Abrams.  Not only are there serious and verified accounts of widespread voter fraud, there are also very credible allegations of unconstitutional procedures in Pennsylvania and perhaps other states. 

Now I know the Democrats don’t want to hear this, they want to get on with their celebrations.  And many Republicans are just tired and want to move on.  But every American should be very concerned about this because if we do not have fair elections that we can trust, then how are we going to retain and protect our democracy?  And the most concerned person should be the presumptive winner and probably next president. 

These challenges go well beyond winning or losing.  Obviously, if they go forward there is a chance Trump could win and if they end here Biden will clearly win.  But at what cost to the nation?  We should all want these challenges to go forward so that we can know that the final outcome was fair and honest.  And the person for whom this should be cause number 1 is the next president of the U.S., whichever candidate that might be.  And if he is not willing to support that assurance to the American people, then how can Biden claim that he intends to be president of all of America?

I hear many proclaiming that now we will not have a bigot/racist in the White House.  First, while many have called President Trump those things when they did not like his policy or action or his sometimes vulgar language, I have seen no actual proof of real bigotry or racism.  Indeed, I have seen a presidency that tries to treat all persons equally under the laws that exist. 

But I would argue that even Mr. Biden’s VP is the result of a racist act.  You will recall that he promised and did select his VP based upon skin color and sex, thus excluding the majority of Americans and American politicians from any consideration whatsoever.  To base such considerations on two immutable characteristics is the very definition of racism.  And no, it is not OK to be racist just to try to prove that you or your party are not racist.

While they are continuing to throw their ugly and hurtful words toward Trump and his supporters, many Democrats now call for conversations wherein we will learn to “understand one another.”  It is hard to have a conversation of understanding when one half of that conversation has already determined the other half to be guilty of things such as racism or other sins and in need of change.  Without tolerance for other views there can be no real understanding.

People are claiming that with a Biden administration we will see a return to love, kindness, family, etc.  Nice words, but the actions betray them.  It is not loving or kind to call those who do not parrot your views the ugly epithets that Democrats fling at Republicans.  It is not kind or loving to threaten them when they do not accept the Democrat view. 

As to family, the Democrat policies are in so many ways anti-family.  Without even mentioning many social values, just looking at economic policies it is clear that Biden’s proclaimed agenda is not family favorable. 

It was Trump who helped to bring many minorities out of poverty and with that create stronger families.  It was Trump whose renegotiated and USA-favorable trade policies helped not only farmers but American businesses and with that jobs for American families.  It was Trump who reformed criminal justice, who made sure Black colleges would remain funded, whose economic polices created better investment opportunities meaning more home ownership, better retirement savings, etc.  Biden has said he will reverse all this, which I do not see as family friendly.

While hate has blossomed on both sides of the aisle, I honestly see the Democrats as the party of hate.  It was VP Biden who participated in illegal plans to spy against President Trump even before he took office.  It was the Democrats who for 4 years refused to accept Trump as their president and did everything within their power to try to remove him from office, thus working to overturn the will of the people.  It has been the Democrats who, blinded by their irrational hatred of President Trump, have spent the last four years lying to the American people and disregarding any aspects of our system of  laws that do not immediately provide them with what they want. 

It is the Democrats who have removed the boarded-up windows in cities that were placed there to protect from rioting after the election, because it was really to protect against riots by Democrats.  Now that a Democrat is the presumptive victor, there is no fear which implies that the Republicans are not the ones likely to riot and destroy.  It is the Democrats who refuse to condemn violence against the Right by their own people as well as by groups such as Antifa (and yes, despite the media and Democrat narrative, Trump has many times condemned violence and White Supremacists).  And it is the Democrats who just keep on posting their nasty memes about Republicans and Trump, claiming that they are just celebrating.

And Joe?  Does he condemn any of that behavior?  No, he just says we will have unity.   Yet if he is willing to continue to accept the hateful behavior upon which the hateful Democrat campaign was built, if his only tolerance at this point is of the continued hatred from the Left, if the only behavior that he will accept is a blind acceptance of his view, then there really is no call for unity at all. 

And so we wait for an official decision, for challenges to be heard and recounts to be had.  We wait, and if we really want an honest and fair election, then the wait is both valuable and worthwhile.  It would be nice if the wait included a call against hatred from the presumptive winner.

Reflecting on Our Great Divide while waiting for Election Results

I am not quite sure what is happening with the returns or when we will know who our President will be come January.  I do know that it may take time to count legitimate ballots.  I know that our system provides for challenges and recounts (which are not voter suppression!).  I know that it seems strange that suddenly late election night all counting stopped as certain states looking as if they would go to Trump suddenly decided to await additional ballots (many of which, legitimate or not?, they seem to have found supportive of Biden).

If Biden is elected, I will accept that.  I will not like it and I will mourn for the America that I believe in.  If Trump is elected, I hope that Democrats will accept that, unlike their hate-based refusal to do so from the date of his 2016 election until today.  But I do not hold out much hope for any tolerance towards Trump or his supporters from the Democrats.  I wish there was something more positive to say.  There is not.

One thing that this election (as well as the last 4 years) has made perfectly clear:  We have two Americas.  And they cannot be reconciled.

Look at the election maps.  In nearly every state you will see vast expanses of red in rural areas with large blue spots atop the big cities.  This red-blue political divide reflects the larger divide between the values and lifestyles of the two groups.  These values, these hopes and dreams for themselves, their neighbors, and for America are often in direct opposition to one another.  The divide is really a divide of two cultures not unlike the divide between two countries. 

It has been suggested that we should have a Fulbright type program between metropolitan and rural areas within the U.S.  This would be a way to foster a better understanding of different ways of life, different cultural values in the same way that the Fulbright program fosters such understanding between different nations.

While I like the sound of this idea, I wonder if it would really help to bring this nation together.  Yes, it would probably promote understanding just as the current Fulbright program promotes understanding of other countries and cultures.  But that understanding does not actually unite two countries into one and currently we essentially have two countries within our borders. 

In 2018 the Pew Research Center published a study of the differences between urban, suburban, and rural cultures.  The study found significant differences between urban/suburban and rural not only in politics, but also in such things as measures of economic well-being, education, optimism about the future, basic values,  views on social issues, importance of diversity, drugs and drug addiction, importance of family ties and attachment to community, interaction with neighbors, immigration, age and economic status of population, type of jobs available, etc.  These are discussed in great detail with statistics and charts showing nuances of similarities and differences; the entire report can be found here:  LINK  

While there are small areas of similarity between urban and rural (with suburban a sort of neutral zone between the two that leans toward each in some ways), there is really very little upon which they agree.  Their differences can all be traced to differences in core values.  While it is possible to tolerate a different value system in another, it is not possible to change it to your own. 

Yet that is exactly what many Democrats and their policies would do.  They would force us to conform to a given set of values legislated or mandated by the government.  There would be no room for tolerance of others.  And the core values of rural and urban are distinctly different and irreconcilable. 

Our country was mostly rural for much of its existence.  Cities have grown larger and larger with former rural dwellers as well as many immigrants who are newer to America and its culture.  The two cultures have different needs and different desires; their cultures are different.

World views, values, beliefs are formed in childhood.  While their superficial expressions may change, their core rarely does.  So if we have entirely different core values being instilled then the populations and the culture that result from those values will be very different and perhaps unable to live together as one.

While Pew did not discuss religion, I think that one’s faith leads to and supports many of one’s values.  Faith and religion play different roles in the lives of rural and urban dwellers.  In many instances the faith of a rural area is a central part of the community; it is something that helps to hold the community together.  In urban areas there may be pockets of sub-communities held together by a particular faith, but faith/religion is not the driving force within most urban areas.

Additionally, the values necessary to a rural culture include self-reliance and independence.  In an urban setting where large numbers of people are grouped together in small spaces, there is more need to become a part of the group and a greater dependence on the group than on ones’s self, for both daily needs as well as one’s own identity.  A belief that one has the right to control one’s own destiny does not merge well with the belief that government can and should control much of a citizenries’ behavior.

Rural and urban America have different mind-sets that have resulted in different cultures.  At one time the total populations between rural and urban were not that different allowing both cultures to have some say in the overall running of our country.

Today, the urban cities, because of their large populations are more and more able to control the outcome of both statewide and federal elections.  This is dangerous.  When two cultures must reside together and only one is heard, the outcome is never good.

I honestly do not think that the huge rural-urban gap can be bridged.  We have two countries and two cultures.  We used to be able to tolerate different views, but this goes well beyond different views.  Because the underlying values are so different the two groups seek entirely different Americas.  While they might want to visit, neither wants to live in the America of the other. 

In this election, once the counts and recounts are concluded and court battles decided, we will have a winner.  The people will have spoken.  But I wonder how long we are able to have one half of the country whose views are polar opposite of the other decide how the entire country will live.   We will permanently be at war with one another.   

We cannot solve this problem with politics or legislation.  We cannot require someone to change their values or beliefs to suit whomever is in power.  We cannot have both big and small government.  We cannot have both capitalism and socialism.  We cannot hold traditional values and deny those traditions for a new world order. 

Once this election is resolved, we will have people calling for us to understand one another and get along, to have “conversations” about our differences.  These things never work.  We are different people and we simply have to accept that fact.  The question is, being so different that we are essentially entirely at odds in all that we believe, how do we live together? 

Our Constitution and our government used to help us to do that with its protections of each individual’s beliefs and speech and its demands for tolerance of others with differing views.  But one of the great divides is that half of us no longer respect that Constitution or our form of government. 

I wish I had a solution.  I do not.