There Is A Reason We Don't Talk

[Editorial]

I was reading an editorial from Bloomberg the other day and I thought yes, it is true but...

We once disagreed. Now we don’t talk

Our division over facts can’t all be attributed to increased misinformation found online

By F.D. Flam Bloomberg Opinion

Since the COVID pandemic began five years ago, the U.S. has gone from being merely polarized to split into two separate and incompatible realities. Worse, according to a recently released survey, we lack a “common understanding of facts.” So much for the new normal.

Your reality depends on whether you identify with the political right or left. In its study, Bright Line Watch asked political scientists, experts in online misinformation and members of the general public to rate the country’s performance on 31 different democratic principles, from fair elections to free speech. A shared understanding of the facts ranked last among the respondents, which included Democrats and Republicans.

Cornell University sociologist Michael Macy predicted some of this a few years ago, arguing that the pandemic had precipitated a tipping point, tearing us apart in a way that wouldn’t be easily reversed. Disasters often have the opposite effect, bringing people together, he told me in a recent interview. But the pandemic was surprisingly divisive.

Okay looking though my "trans lens" I see something that I cannot even begin to discuss. My right to exist! As James Baldwin said about Civil Rights, I also say about Trans Rights...

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

How can you even begin to talk when they want to force you our of existence! What can we even discuss when they want to lock your ass in jail? What are we supposed to do..."Okay we can go out in public after 9PM on weekends." negotiate our rights?

Today, one side sees the actions of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency as cleaning up fraud and waste. In contrast, the other sees vital services and programs being dismantled. The split views of facts and reality could help explain the differing responses to the Signalgate controversy, with some viewing the text message scandal as a consequence of gross incompetence and negligence that’s put the nation at risk. Others downplayed its significance or shifted the blame. Both sides looked at the same evidence and came away with entirely different views.

But when the Republicans went after Hillary Clinton 70 times for supposedly using an unsecured server but then dismisses the use of an unsecured app as not the same! Or when one side ignores the Constitution's Check & Balances and wants to deport judges who do not rule in their favor?

Fear makes people feel justified in bullying, she said. Many of those using what was then Twitter in 2020 and 2021 saw that. People who wanted to start talking about reopening schools, for example, were labeled grandma killers. People on both sides were proud of bullying and cruelty as long as it was done for the correct (their) side.

Okay let us look at fear. What political party used fear? What political party came out and said that undocumented immigrants were eating the kittens and puppies? What political party came out and lied saying that trans students were forming whole teams of trans student to play sports? How can you even begin to talk when one side is yanking people off the streets in defiance of the courts, that it even worries Supreme Court justices?

How can you even sit down with someone to work out a middle ground when they do not even believe in vaccinations? Or even cannot agree on fluoridated water? 62.8% of the total U.S. population drinks fluoridated water do you think that if what they say is true that we would have seems massive evidence of the side affects if there were problems over the 75 - 80 years that water have been fluoridated. But they don't believe in evidence!

And so it’s possible that random chance dictated that it was conservatives who were more concerned with the possibility the COVID virus came from a lab leak and liberals who were more determined to keep schools closed. Today, the conservative right is more distrustful of scientists and the government and has been through the pandemic, while historically, it’s gone the other way — with liberals more distrustful, especially about the U.S. involvement in wars from Vietnam to Iraq.

That is totally bull! I think liberal are more distrusting of everything that is coming out of the White House today.

[/Editorial]