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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grimhelm" data-source="post: 4491880" data-attributes="member: 37079">The current polarization has happened as a natural consequence of a two party system. Actually, it is surprising that it hasn't come to this point sooner. When one side pushes, the other side will mostly likely push back. It is a sort of consequence of human behavior that when one side of a debate or ideology rises up and asserts itself that another opposite sort of ideology appears to combat it.  When the terrorists struck NY, we rose up and fought them. As a result, their ideologies and our ideologies become more prounounced and combative. It is this way with any set of polarized ideals, such as liberalism and conservativism, religious and atheist, good and evil. Alan Watts compares this phenomenon to a wave. One cannot hope to get rid of the troughs by making the waves bigger. Yet, this is just how we operate in the sphere of ideas and ideological argumentation. We are always hoping to make our side bigger in order to squelch the other side. What we always fail to see is that by making our side bigger (the wave), we immediately create deeper troughs. The way to eliminate this phenomenon is simply to bow out of it. Obama has done a pretty good job of simply avoiding this sort of debate. This is not to say there are other people willing to fuel the fire, but as President, it is his tone that will make the difference, not the tiny sharks in his camp. McCain, on the other hand, is aggressive and combative to the end. During the debate he didn't hesitate to belittle his opponent with words like "he just doesn't get it." Obama never once accused McCain in this way. The reason I predict a landslide is because, as IM has pointed out, education leads to liberal thinking. Obama's campaign is using the Internet and community organizing on a scale not yet seen. He is educating the masses. He is moving them to action. This movement may not be completely apparent yet, but I predict that his strategy will work overwhelmingly. I also predict that McCain's campaign will implode under the weight of his aggressive style. What IM also alludes to is the biological fact that human beings like to have their reality and beliefs confirmed. As a general rule we only seek out knowledge that confirms our own beliefs. In our heads beliefs=reality. Therefore to change our beliefs changes our reality... a large step to be sure! Therefore there are essentially two kinds of learners: The learner who believes his perception of reality is mostly accurate and the learner who believes his perception of reality is just a starting point. The first learner will work to confirm his own perceptions. The second will work to expand his perceptions. The first kind of learner will resist change and difference because it does not fit with his world view. The second sort of learner will expect to see change and difference and will incorporate it into his thinking because change and difference is already a part of his reality. "Conservatives" tend to fall into the former camp. They are less likely to embrace change. In fact, they tend to see the past as a place that is better than the present. They tend to view the changes they have seen as negative for it does not fit with what their original view of the world was. "Liberals" tend to embrace change. They tend to be more future oriented. They do not look to the glorious past. They look to a future that can be affected and changed positively. Anyway, this is long winded, ain't it? I guess to conclude the thought: Get educated. Become informed. Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers knew it to be critical if democracy and FREEDOM were to survive. And let's face it, those guys were some liberal fanatics for their time and place. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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