Is political partisanship irrational ..

[Baruch]

Is political partisanship irrational?  Is the primary neb-lib model (Star Trek) in fact fascist?  Here is a short film that ties it all together ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgRlzFIgm1E

[Jason78]

Is political partisanship irrational?

Yes.   Have you seen the way other countries do democracy?

[Cavebear]

Partisanship is not, per se, irrational.  One can decide a political party is better overall than another.

[Atheon]

When there are two parties, one of which is made up almost entirely of lunatics, then siding with the sane party is rational.

[Cavebear]

Siding with sanity is always rational, but the Democratic party has some flaws too.   Their drive toward globalism (rational) is not always rationally pursued.

[Baruch]

Siding with sanity is always rational, but the Democratic party has some flaws too.   Their drive toward globalism (rational) is not always rationally pursued.

One Ring to rule them all ... and in the darkness bind them!

[Cavebear]

Yeah, but this election doesn't have an Aragorn.  And I would settle for an Eowyn...

[Baruch]

Yeah, but this election doesn't have an Aragorn.  And I would settle for an Eowyn...

Hillary is Galadriel with the Ring ... a kind of Hecate ;-(

[Hydra009]

When there are two parties, one of which is made up almost entirely of lunatics, then siding with the sane party is rational.

I could actually see myself siding with the Republicans on occasion if they reversed their Southern Strategy and adopted far more centrist views.  But at the moment, the naked theocratic views, in addition to a whole host of other issues, make them far too repulsive to support.  It would take a lot to fix that wagon, and they'd be practically unrecognizable afterwards, but it's possible.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

We must unite behind Saurman or Sauron will win the one ring.

The two party system in a nutshell.

[Baruch]

We must unite behind Saurman or Sauron will win the one ring.

The two party system in a nutshell.

Denethor and Saruman both looked into something powerful, that looked back into them.  Ambition is the original sin.  Denethor was the Democrat, Saruman was the Republican.

But I see your version too ... basically if the US and Nato isn't evil, Putin will beat is to it.

[Cavebear]

The current candidates are neither Denethor or Sauron.  They are both diminished.  But Clinton is better than Trump, a minor leader of orcs.  Trump aligns with orcs.  Clinton, aligns with elves, though not one.

[SGOS]

I could actually see myself siding with the Republicans on occasion if they reversed their Southern Strategy and adopted far more centrist views.  But at the moment, the naked theocratic views, in addition to a whole host of other issues, make them far too repulsive to support.  It would take a lot to fix that wagon, and they'd be practically unrecognizable afterwards, but it's possible.

Yesterday, NPR interviewed a professor of polisci/history at Boston College, Heather Cox, who spoke to this issue:

https://www.amazon.com/Make-Men-Free-History-Republican/dp/0465024319/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet while visionary Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower shared Lincoln’s egalitarian dream, their attempts to use government to guard against the concentration of wealth have repeatedly been undone by the country’s moneyed interests and members of their own party. Ronald Reagan’s embrace of big businessâ€"and the ensuing financial crisisâ€"is the latest example of this calamitous cycle, but it is by no means the first.

In To Make Men Free, celebrated historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Grand Old Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession, showing how Republicans’ ideological vacillations have had terrible repercussions for minorities, the middle class, and America at large. Expansive and authoritative, To Make Men Free explains how a relatively young party became America’s greatest political hopeâ€"and, time and time again, its greatest disappointment.

She believes Trump is the end of a current cycle, or at least part of the end.  I'm personally not so sure, although she makes a fair case based on past cycles.  However, it's not necessarily true that past cycles always repeat.  They can spin off into something entirely different.  Wherever the Party is headed, the current leadership doesn't seem to want to let go of it's current form, but then that's probably always true.

[Cavebear]

The Republican Party has to completely shift in order to survive.  It can become standard Centrist or maybe shift toward Libertarianism.  But it can't survive as "old angry white males".  I thought the change would happen after 1996 when Bill Clinton was re-elected, but I was ahead of my time.  The Bush/Gore Supreme Curt partisan decision gave them 8 years.  Of war and recession...

The typical routine since 1980 has been that the Republicans try to apply bizarre economic theories that fail and the Democrats have to clean up the screw-ups.  That can't continue.  We can't afford the Republican dreams...

[Baruch]

The current candidates are neither Denethor or Sauron.  They are both diminished.  But Clinton is better than Trump, a minor leader of orcs.  Trump aligns with orcs.  Clinton, aligns with elves, though not one.

Sauron not equal to Saruman ;-)  I think you meant Saruman (if you were quoting me).  Yes, Clinton supporters are like elves, but like the hideous picture of a Santa elf posted earlier.  Santa was a communist.