Yeah No

I don't have any answers about how to bring Dems. together but I have suggested a four party solution to friends. I am still considering it as a solution. I'm not sure it would work but it's worth considering.

I have no problem with being challenged if it's done in a fair way but I felt like assumptions were being made about me and my experiences, positions and opinions that were unfair and not true. And it felt like disrespect, that's what I was reacting to.

Ummm....That actually IS their common ground! Very effective, too. Not what I would condone of course. Yes, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. We don't want to be as bad as the other side with the axe grinding. I personally feel we should be focusing on the positives. Call upon people to do the right thing, don't engage in blame games or feed into people's grievances. It doesn't work for Democrats. We have to be above that crap. I'm talking about getting Democrats to come together. It's bad enough we are working against all of the above coming from the other side of the spectrum who are also trying to steal away from our ranks, but to be at each others' throats won't accomplish that unification, that's my point. I think if we can find a way to get Democrats to come together we won't be losing them and they'll be focused on the bigger picture and the positives. It's the only way we're going to win.

I grew up in the Bronx. We were poorer than many people in our neighborhood and my mother worked full time at a time before other mothers did. I did not grow up in privilege or in the suburbs, we couldn't afford to move there. And to me unless it was Washington Hts. or Inwood I would consider being able to live in Manhattan a privilege. Yet another place we couldn't afford to live and I couldn't afford as an adult. It's why I left NYC. And if I have rose colored glasses a lot of people did back then only I don't see it that way. I think we were preferring to look at our commonality and not find fault with each other over differences. If you think that's wearing "rose colored glasses", I feel sorry that you're that pessimistic about America. I will never lose my faith in this place or in Americans because some have lost their way. I don't think most of them are irredeemable. And I think that people that do might as well leave this place and learn to appreciate it more because I'm sure that once they find out how life is in other countries, they'll be fighting to get back into this place.

I'm not looking through rose colored glasses! I made that point as an example of what is possible. If we could only do that again and make it stick. I even acknowledged when I said it that it was for a brief moment and if only we could do it again. Sheesh. Again, so many assumptions. I feel like you're just looking for reasons to find something wrong with what I said. I am saying we need to come together. That is my biggest point but all people can see is one nit they can pick apart to nullify it. Not fair.

I didn't just visit, I stayed with my Dad for weeks afterward and I was never out of touch with NYC for a very long time beforehand. I had only been away from NYC for less than a decade when that happened. I resent that you think I would be that out of touch with my own home town when I lived so close to it that I was there several days a week for almost a year because my mother was sick for several months and then died right before 9/11 and was out of work and visiting her. Then my Dad needed the support so I stayed with him. And I was never out of touch with my friends nor their points of view on this. And my friends were not all "privileged white people" either. So many assumptions here....

Again, this was being reported by just about every news outlet so it wasn't "just my experience". There are always people determined to find differences and grievances and not see the bigger picture but most people at the time did see how we united after 9/11 for a brief moment and put differences aside. And it was temporary although it lasted for more than a week. I cited it as an example of how this could happen back in the day but not now. My point is being completely lost here but it is an important one because Americans need to find common ground, not just gang up on each other over differences. I'm beginning to think it's too far gone now. But they shouldn't blame the person calling for us to find common ground instead of grinding axes. Grinding axes doesn't solve anything, it only perpetuates the problem.

Perhaps but New York has been called "the great equalizer" for a reason. I pick my battles but I have been outspoken even when it might not be received so well. And many Black people in NY are equally as outspoken, I can assure you of that. Unless you are from NYC and have lived there for any length of time I think you are out of your depth attempting to tell me what my experience is or has been there. I grew up in a very racially integrated environment. I wonder just how many people here can say that they grew up with 50% or more non-white kids in their school and people of all faiths, colors and religions in their neighborhoods and apartment buildings. So unless you come from this kind of background I don't believe you can speak to my experience and know more than I do about it. In my life I have often been the ONLY white person in a room, a store or an office. So I know what it's like to have to worry about what I say lest it be taken the "wrong way" and I don't need anyone telling me I'm somehow more privileged than anyone else about it under those circumstances. And I don't think calling for being against terrorists is what's causing polarization. When we are united against a REAL, TANGIBLE evil that's OK or what was WWII all about? Being polarized but united against an outside evil is OK. It's when we are polarized against ourselves as Americans first and foremost that's the problem.

I was talking about NYC because I am a New Yorker and was in NYC a lot after 9/11 and have many friends down there as well. That was my experience. Plus it wasn't my imagination that pretty much all the national news outlets wrote and presented pieces on how Americans came together in spite of their differences, so I'm sure it wasn't just a passing thing in NYC nor my limited experience either. I feel like some people are determined to see and pick apart our differences and find instances to support those differences, but this is just part of the problem. Most people didn't do that after 9/11 including the news people. In fact, just the opposite. I think the people looking for division and differences today and want to rewrite history to do it need to look in the mirror because they're only perpetuating the problem that's being used against them. We need to stop being our own worst enemies and stop finding reasons to hate and blame everyone. It's what's taking us down.

Wow you are really taking the words right out of my mouth today. Again I have thought this many, many times and it baffles me too. Also if not for many older people we never would have had so many Democratic presidents over the past 60 years or so. A lot of those voters have died in the past decade or so, my father included, which is regrettable, and now we're seeing the younger generation not getting up and voting or shifting right, so it's a bad combination.

Sure there was stuff like that but the average American wasn't tuned into local DJs and they didn't have the widespread control over people's opinions that they do today. And everyone I know thought the Freedom Fries thing was ridiculous including Republicans I worked with at the time who cringed at the idea. And I was talking about NYC and what was going on there. I personally had no problem speaking my mind and if anyone felt intimidated I'm sorry they felt that way but I don't let people intimidate me like that. Of course I don't walk up to people and advertise what I think either. Within reason. And when the country is under a real attack I don't think it's hard to understand saying things like "you're with us or against us", although that may be a poor choice of words open to interpretation. This was a very real threat to our country but this was W so I consider the source. I immediately regretted voting for him as historically I've voted overwhelmingly Democratic. I didn't agree with painting all Muslims with the same brush and those that wanted mosques shut down and moved away from them in NY were seen as fringe wackos by many NYers were and I believe any movement about that was squelched by the gov't. anyway. They were by far not like a big MAGA movement like we have today comprised of 50% or more of the electorate. So in context I think it was not that significant. You can always cite things from history but they were not representative of the general feeling of the time as far as I and many NYers I have talked with over the years feel about this.

Exactly this. I have thought this many times myself.

By the way, my first boyfriend in HS was injured when the first tower fell. He was a Daily News photographer that also taught classes in photography at NYU, a Jew and a lifelong Democrat. He was thrown about 20 feet before he hit the ground and shattered both legs. He was rescued by firefighters, to whom he is still to this day very indebted and credits with saving his life. He doesn't give two craps what their political views are. To him they are people that put their lives at risk to save others regardless of their political views. Americans that loved their country and were in service to it. And that's typical of what I'm talking about and my experience in NYC with other New Yorkers as a result of 9/11. Too bad it didn't last!

That's interesting, I'm a New Yorker and was still living closer to NYC at that time. My father lived there and I stayed down with him for a time after 9/11 and among my friends and I down there this was not our experience at all. In my experience people put their political differences on the back burner and came together on what united us. Plus the differences between us back then feel like nits compared to today. YMMV.

I wrote this this morning after having long talks with two good friends yesterday. I hope it is taken in a positive way because that's the way it's intended. The internet has made it easier to brainwash, mislead and control people's minds. It has also made it easier to dehumanize and vilify other people, and has lead to extreme polarization and black and white thinking (us v.s them). The anonymity factor of the internet has made it easier to disrespect other people and project onto them all the evils you imagine they have instead of getting to know them as human beings first to fact check that. It is much harder to really get to know people online. They can hide their true natures from us and present a fiction and you can project better qualities onto them if they fool you well enough. Back when I lived in NYC before the internet we always saw wackos standing on street corners wearing placards crying hate and all sorts of insane ideologies but it was much easier to assess that they were wackos and dismiss them when they were right in front of us. Now it's not so easy and the wackos have found ways to normalize and "sanewash" themselves online. Sinister minds are using this to their advantage. While the internet has been around for over 3 decades now, they are getting better at their craft using newer and newer technologies to achieve it. They don't need to bomb us anymore to bring us as a nation to our knees. All they need is to brainwash us and turn us against each other. Trump talks about "the enemy within". Did he get that from Putin? Sounds kinda familiar. People old enough to have been adults on Sept. 11 remember how the country came together as a whole and united against a clear enemy. Sinister minds saw that and realized that they had to turn us against each other to have power over us. And those of us old enough to remember how we united after Sept. 11 know how impossible that unification of our society would be today. Today our public is too divided against itself and even disagrees on who the real enemies are. We always had extremes in this country but they were much smaller groups with smaller voices and it wasn't as easy for them to take control of people's minds and turn us against each other in such large numbers in any organized, effective way before the internet. The way I see young people talk today you'd think we were all racists, misogynists and homophobes living in some kind of 1950s sitcom before they were born. This is completely untrue. I have been told that I was living in some kind of "liberal bubble". I was NOT. There was NO WAY we would have had 50 years of Roe v. Wade and all the changes made by the civil rights movement, the legalization of gay marriage in all states, etc., if that were true. History does not support that conclusion. The problem is that the minority that's against these things have wormed their way into control over these matters against the will of the majority. And now they are finding better ways to recruit new people to their cause to expand their base. New impressionable minds that don't have a strong enough character to resist it. They are minds that need a scapegoat for all of their hurts and problems, and something or someone that accepts them even if it means rejecting others in the process. These people are too damaged to care about anyone else but themselves. And they have a big pool of people to draw from on this that have been bullied, left out and ostracized online and need to feel important. When someone comes along and gives them a scapegoat for all of their problems they are ripe for the picking. They tell them the reason they are feeling this way is because certain types and groups of people are trying to put them down and take their power away from them. So it's no wonder we have all this hatred and polarization going on. These are relatively uneducated people that don't remember or weren't part of the movement of the socially progressive majority so they don't have the foundation of values to resist this stuff. And we have a party that increasingly has sold its soul to the devil for the promise of power that's perfectly willing to exploit them for it. Now I don't know about anyone else, but it's completely obvious to me that this situation has reached a head in only 23 years, and that's because it had a lot of help. Trump all by himself is a polarizing figure so he is responsible for a lot of it. But the sinister forces coming from outside our country are largely responsible for making this situation even worse and have been taking advantage of the Trump effect for their own purposes. We know they have been doing this online, it's been written and talked about by virtually everyone. I think it's of extreme importance to address this problem before it tears our country apart and renders us completely defenseless against any kind of takeover, whether it be political or by making us so ineffectual that we as a country can much less power. We did not do this to ourselves all by ourselves. We were instigated into it every step of the way. And that is one big problem I think we need to address as Americans. We shouldn't be looking for ways to turn on each other, that only plays into their hands. We need to resist that and come together. Democrats in particular need to find a universal and consistent message that all of us agree upon, not get bogged down in where we disagree, because that just lets them win and keep winning. We also can't give in to finding fault with our Democracy, our freedom of speech and other rights and beliefs we hold dear. Those things are not the problem as I see it. Getting down on the U.S. and picking apart our Constitution is only going to hurt us not get us to where we want to be. If we want Americans to see the value in our party we can't allow ourselves to be identified as the party that hates America because again, that only feeds into the other side's hand and why they came up with the slogan, "Make America Great Again" and are all about being the party that loves America. We have to show that we love America too, the America we are in spirit if not in practice. The America we once were before we were all at each other's throats. We always disagreed but it was not on this level and we didn't have people going to these extremes in any large numbers. And we were able to concentrate on standing and fighting for what we believed in, not fighting with each other. I personally think any kind of extremism is dangerous and not the answer. Think about what we believe in and agree upon and concentrate on that. Forget about what other people think of you. Look in the mirror and be the change you want to see in the world, stop pointing fingers at everyone else for why you are so oppressed and become more and more extreme as a result as you try to regain some power. That's what the other side does and you want to be the party of inclusion, acceptance and equality, not the party that descends to their level. So anyway, that's my advice from my older person's point of view, and thank you for letting me rant.