Communication — Breaking the Cycle

You can't have an honest debate with your average conservative.
    They have been defending their wrong-minded values and policies for so long that they know every rhetorical trick in the book. No doubt they think the same of liberals. One side says this, the other says that. Each deftly ripostes the other with diversionary arguments, true or false, and communications turn into a turf war, complete with opponent demonization and revisionist history. Like children fighting in a schoolyard, insulting each other's parents while throwing mud and stones.
    With each confrontation, the results get worse. Each side gets more entrenched and accumulates more grievances. It would be just a meaningless waste of time, except for the fact that our democracy is rapidly deteriorating. Professional propagandists contribute to this mightily, and are well paid to feed political tensions to critical mass.
    Who among conservatives is trying to solve anything? Conservatism has become an ideology that no longer conserves virtue, but dispenses license for bigotry and hate.
    We can change that, anymore than we can make liberals patient. Each side is motor set, and therefore enslaved by ideology. They've already lost freedom of thought. Each feeds off the other, although disproportionally. When liberals adopt conservative tactics, they remove any possibility of saving the country. Indeed, they validate what the oppose.
    It seems the only action we can take is to open the minds and hearts of those who are not fully indoctrinated to what is happening. We need to educate people to see real alternatives to issues, and reject the artificial priorities and solutions that those in power press upon us.
    Our founders warned us about the dangers of partisanship, and yet we stubbornly ignore them, and then complain about the results.
    When it comes to dealing with conservative extremists, we must not play their game, no matter how hard they try to maneuver us into that corner. If we do, we lose track of our message, and treat their message as equal to our own.
    We have to pause and make sure that we are not part of that unending feud that leads to nowhere. By stepping outside that tiresome circle of talking points, we can say loud and clear that:

The American people are not and never will be socialists, as much as some people would like to believe to feed ignorant paranoia. As caring patriots who love their country, which means their fellow citizens, the majority of them want universal health coverage. The Constitution allows this, because it clearly empowers Congress to promote the general welfare of the people. The efforts of President Obama and his supporters are therefore working within the system as it was written by our founders. It is not socialism, a bugaboo word intended to resurrect anti-communist paranoia. Communism is dead. It no longer threatens anyone. It failed miserably in the last century, and fails to present an empty rallying cry for a serious democracy.

It is time to speak out with clear voices that do not add to the bitter confusion that liberals and conservatives have created in order to build their own circles of power. America is not about political parties. It is about presenting truth to lies and educating the public to make informed, intelligent choices.

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