Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
North America is split down the middle man. Middle. That's 300,000,000 people. If you think most of those 150,000,000 are logical and only three of the other half are worth listening too then you are truly in the dark.
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Well, to get this discussion back on a track (although not necessarily the original one), I take issue with the idea that there are two sides at all. That idea is a pernicious construct that does nothing to illuminate issues and much to obscure them; especially in America where it seems that no one can speak about anything without getting labelled as either a knuckle-dragging, jesus-jumping right-winger or else a hypocritical, sanctimonious liberal. It's not all that much better in Canada, mind you, but I think much of that devolves from the overheated atmosphere south of the border spilling over into our minds like tentacles of living smog.
Personally, on some issues I tend towards views that would be labelled "conservative", on other issues I tend towards what would be deemed "liberal". Does this mean I am in the centre? NO! That's just a label that doesn't tell you anything - it gives you absolutely no information on how I feel about any particular issue. For the majority of people THAT is where they stand, somewhere in this mythical middle, where it's possible to be a born-again Christian but work for Greenpeace, or a Marxist professor who is against abortion.
I wish we could just discard this bipolar idiocy and talk about issues without having to bring out the swords of ideology to fight pointless battles again and again. Right and left are models that mean nothing important, you can go back to Swift and his satire on the Big-Endians and Little-Endians to see how such arbitrary divisions do nothing but divide to no purpose; that they never have had any purpose; that they never will.
In this specific instance, I don't care that Fox considers itself "right", I just care that in so many cases they allow their allegiance to that idea to reject anything they see as "left", regardless of its intrinsic worth or truth, and worse, to assume that because an opinion is "conservative" it is not only undoubtely correct but also worthy of distorting the facts to support. That's what you get in a bi-polar world - "my country (or race; system; ideology; religion), right or wrong" and similar stupidities that stifle thought for conformity.
A pox on both their houses. If you reek of the heresy of "wingism", expect no fair hearing from me; you are tainted with a world-view that automatically puts your discriminatory capabilities in question. Stop thinking every question has different answers that lie along some imaginary continuum of opinion - the world is too complex to be divided into only two parts.