Debate 10.09.16

Notes on the staging:

Terrible mix of people on stage, terrible lack of diversity not enough brown-- too much Ohio. Painfully white.

Tall bar chair really awkward 

She doesn't stop when they tell her the time is up

Hillary gets a little too intense about talking directly at you

She should NOT respond to stupid jabs he makes, she should treat them as beneath her

The Donald continues to sniff

He is speaking directly to his base-- sticking to his schitck.. They will truly believe he won, because they believe all his garbage. 

He's kept his composure much better than expected. 

Divorce time.

Sarah Vowel says that our country has always been this contentious, this divisive. We are locked in such an ugly tug of war. Both sides think the other is ruining everything and destroying everything they believe in, everything that makes this country great. Makes me wonder how it would be now if the south had won. If all those nasty racists just made their own rules for their own little government. All the rigid white Christians with their twisted ideas of what god wants can live together in harmony. They can find new things to fight about amongst themselves. And leave us alone to get on with taking care of our people and growing a healthy economy.

How would it be? From over here on the far left, the extremists---ahem ---conservatives on the right can generally agree on a majority of issues. For liberals it's all so much more complicated. Conservatives begin from the premise that everyone should follow the same rules, think alike, behave alike. A combination of the original hard puritanical .....

I began this post last July. Over a year ago.

Recent events have confirmed the value of revisiting my original idea.  Consider the advantages of splitting the United States.  We hate each other. Really truly hate everything the other side stands for. So why not just let them have their own damn country.  We've tried compromising and trying to get along for over 200 years now. So we've given it a fair shot. But this constant battle between our values and their values just leaves all of us feeling frustrated and unhappy at best, enraged and dangerous at worst. We've denied ourselves the pursuit of happiness. 

Now that the other side has quit pretending to be nice, maybe we could just shake hands and go our separate ways. Think of it. All the white people who only want to share with other white people can have their own sandbox. They resent us trying to make them share. How else could we have gotten to 2016 trying to get along with people who hate us. How else could we allow a world where black parents fear for their children's lives everyday.   It seems infinitely preferable--and safer-- to let them have their own space to live by whatever rules they want. Let them have their own country with as many assault weapons as they want. Let them keep making the poor poorer and the rich richer. Let them have the country they want. With their "boys only" and "girls only" and their whites only and Christians only, heterosexuals only and their patriarchy. 

We could all be so much happier apart. Here in blue land everyone is paid a living wage. Health care is distributed  without the insurance companies' interference. People could have good jobs maintaining all the bridges and roads that are currently crumbling. Our movies and tv shows could have people of every color and gender doing mundane and extraordinary things. Our schools could be the best in the world. We could lead the way in reducing our carbon footprint globally. We could focus our industry on environmentally  beneficial products.  We could have thriving factory towns where enough solar panels are made sell to the rest of the world. We could eliminate the prison industry that gets rich on our tax dollars. 

I have to stop for now.