Republican Platform - Reaffirms Anti LGBT Stance

[Kulindahr]

There's no justice or democracy in anyone doing something like that.

Only if half the people approve....

The thing is, the U.S. has become a place where hate is the order of the day. The Right does it, the Left does it, sports fans do it, it pervades life to the pint that many Americans aren't happy unless they have someone to hate. So we get violence, fed by a Hollywood theme of showing violence as a way to resolve issues, a theme "affirmed" in many minds by our instant-gratification society that demands quick solutions to anything and everything. Trump feeds hate, but so does Hillary, both portraying their opponents as despised and worthy of despite.

Of course historically that's always been the case to an extent, but there was a stronger current of just getting along, not bothering one's neighbor unless the neighbor was doing harm. I frequently think the U.S. inherited the worst side of British political life and ran with it, with the result we see today of an animosity that, mixed as I described above, leads to people shootings cops as a solution to government's utter intransigence and inability to deal with the problem. Given the eagerness with which a few are shooting cops, and the actual affirmation that cops deserve it that can be found easily online, I have to conclude that there are more than a few people out there looking at the candidates and thinking that the only way to prevent us from having to make a choice between two evils is to shoot the evils.

Hillary wants to work within the system, and she's effective at it, but that very trait and talent assure she is deeply hated, because the system is hated and seen as a huge problem (which it clearly is). Trump presents himself as despising the system yet is at the same time a gleeful manipulator of it, making him just as much a part of the system, and so he is hated from a different direction as part of the system. In fact, were I writing this political season as a novel, some shadowy group would arrange to kill both candidates on the same day as a statement in blood of "None of the above!"

Historically we are in a condition that is not uncommon, where a large portion of the people are convinced that their country has failed them or even failed altogether. As Lawrence Lessig points out, we have either already lost or are in the process of losing the Republic that Benjamin Franklin famously said we were given... if we could keep it. And historically that perception has led to a resort to violence because people feel powerless when they believe the system has failed them. Of course almost without exception violence has never solved the problem; it is only a solution when it follows the course of the rational exercise of the right to insurrection, something not exercised by lone individuals or tiny groups but by a mass movement of significant portion of the population -- yet that has never stopped individuals or tiny groups from trying (and inevitably making things worse).