Ohh man we live different lives
Me and my brother were on the verge of a fist fight over demographics and high school football like 2 weeks ago. We agreed on about 99% but that 1%.
Ohhh man
Good times
Oh I have been in some heated arguments. One of the weirdest was with a neighbor who became a very good friend when I lived in Reno. He was black, and was arguing against the idea that police are biased against black men. He felt it was a bad reflection on "his people" that they do things that bring it down on themselves. This was maybe 10 years ago, so we didn't have all the instagram evidence of shootings like we do now, but he was embarrassed by other black people behaving as they do towards police and authority figures, felt it made them all look bad. He could not stand the use of the word "ax" in place of "ask" and things like that. I was trying to point out the differences in arrest rates and such but he didn't want to hear it, and got pretty worked up about it.
Incidentally, he worked at UNR as an adjunct in philosophy and mathematics I think. Interesting dude. I need to reach out to him and see what his take is on the current state of police relations with blacks. Would be interested to know.
That all said, even in the most heated arguments, we always have areas we can agree and most often those are the real lynch-pins of our society. Most people believe we need to do better with education, health care in some way, jobs and wage growth, and income inequality. The arguments come in how we do it, but take say, Obama care for example. I was not a fan, neither were some of my friends, but others were in favor. Not because it was perfect but because they had to do something. And that I could agree with as well. It was far from perfect and really didn't accomplish what we thought it would, but we had to start somewhere, and on that most of all of my friends I have discussed this with can agree. Few of the people I have discussed it with were vehemently for or against it, but they were definitely strongly on one side or the other for the most part. But the compromise comes in the idea that doing something is probably better than doing nothing. And unfortunately as divided as our government is, they are really doing less and less to advance the standard of living for the american people. They are more interested in getting people to protest and "rock the vote" or whatever to make sure they get their guys or gals into the important roles. And that is done through hitting the hot-button topics as hard as they can, and ignoring anything that might look rational from the other side.
As I think bulletproof or someone said it, but we need to try to acknowledge when even an ogre like Trump does something right, so to speak, and maybe even helps some people. It does not good at all to vilify everything about any one politician because he is a tool. That just pushes everyone further apart.
I think about Romney and his stance on abortion. He was raked over the coals as a "flip-flopper" because his views on abortion had changed over his lifetime. Good hell, I hope people are able to learn and grow and hear other viewpoints and sometimes change their own. It is stupid beyond belief to expect someone to toe the party line so hard that we try to tear someone down for making a measured and reasoned change to their stance on a given topic. I read a lot about his views on abortion at the time and I think he legitimately had a change of heart. But for most, even on the republican side where they had to distance themselves from his views (that abortion is ok in certain circumstances, a hugely radical shift for a dyed-in-the-wool repub), and the democrats of course had to use that to try to show he was a liar or something. Just stupid.
That is why I think our politicians are caricatures of us. They exaggerate the points they need to in order to incite rabid action among their people. That is how they have learned to stay in power.
Think about the shift we have see in the NBA with the 3-pt line. We went from that being the icing on the cake to being as much as 55% of a team's shots (Houston did this several games last season). It has been exaggerated because of the evolving understanding of the stats of the different shots in the game. So has the positions of politicians as they dial in on what **** they need to shoot in order to keep their power.
