Looks like a great read. Thanks

Making sure they keep us all at one another's throats is how they maintain power.

that they need three checkpoints to get to their house?

Maybe I'm weird, but I'm not that scared of even my MAGAt neighbors.

probably with a few lying around unlocked - just in case.

Maybe a cellar with enough provisions for the coming race war.

Fisher Island is only accessible by yacht or a private 24-hour passenger ferry. The main selling point, and the reason people buy homes there is "exclusivity." (Definition of exclusive: excluding or not admitting other things.)

You get an exclusive view of the container ships and cranes in the port. Rich people are weird.

Fear seems to be the driving force in these people's lives. I can't imagine living in a community that's more like a prison than a neighborhood.

Sowing fear and fearful people are controllable. Not to mention the training of as soon as you say taxes they are fearful. Even though the services that the taxes pay sustains their life.

in our different forms and abilities. Just like the rest of nature, diversification makes the world a better place.

Segregation has changed its face but it has been this way for hundreds of years.
Fear of others is baked into our foundation and politicians reinforce it for power. Don’t get me started on Fox News.

I grew up in a white flight suburb around Chicago, and the people there were extreme guardians of who they did and did not want in their neighborhood. It has ever been thus.

However, culturally and geographically, we've been making progress in that area. Where suburbs used to be predominantly white even twenty or thirty years ago, nearly half of suburbanites are now non-white. Where I grew up, it had been 98% white in the 80s and early 90s. Now it's at around 65%.

There's a lot of opportunity in that, particularly where younger generations are concerned as they will grow up in a world where their peers come from a more diverse set of families and cultures.

Now it feels like we're U-turning towards that extreme polarization-induced segregation due to mass and social media, and it's like you can't win for trying. I have Trump-voting neighbors. I talk to them all the time. I'm not going to turn up my nose at them or engage in verbal slap fights in my driveway. (Although I do enjoy the . . . imaginative stories in that regard that crop up here). People are people. It's actually easier to treat them as such. No one's going to be utterly destroyed despite the fantasies, so we might as well find ways to live with each other.

Shooting someone because he’s a different color because he knocked on your door. Being a minority I don’t think your MAGA neighbor would appreciate me.
Asking someone what are you doing in this neighborhood and let me see proof.
We’re willing to live with white folks perhaps they should be willing to live with others.

I'm gay and my partner is dark-skinned AAPI - people frequently assume he's Latino. Directly across the street from me, one home is AAPI and the other is a multi-generational Black family (I only mention multi-generational because I love grandma so. very. much.)

Everyone gets along in a neighborly way.

You kind of just proved my point by making the assumption that just because they voted for Trump they were going to go ham on any minority in the neighborhood. That's not the case.

It's different everywhere, but it's economics that motivates my asshole neighbors. If there are strangers at the door, or a damaged car, or someone who looks like they could be experiencing poverty, they're posting Ring footage on NextDoor. My immediate neighbors are pretty chill, but man, there are some real ones around here I wouldn't mind seeing bounce into the sunset.

And this is a solid Blue area.

But your reality is not mine. That is wonderful you are accepted by your Maga neighbors, but as a stranger would I be accepted. They might call the police maybe shoot me because they don’t know me and all they see is my color. If it is economics as you said , they would become democrats. The larger picture is they would destroy the entire country for one traitorous, racist, sexist, felonious, monster. Oh yeah by the way I live with hillbillies .

I saw them at Outside Lands in S.F. way back when I was still new to the city. God, that had to be over a decade ago. Gettin old.

The UK is still very class-conscious.

pillaging the Middle East, still being fought over btw.

That's why there can be no "rekindling of the open spirit of kinship" the author would like. Sorry to burst his bubble, but that ain't happening. About as likely as Nuremberg rally goers in 1934 suddenly deciding en masse that Nazism is illogical and destructive and resigning from the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

There is an evil that's lodged deep in the American psyche and far more prevalent in certain parts of the country. It's been there for a long, long time and no amount of kumbaya will change that. So if the "League of the South" wants to separate and go off and be apartheid South Africa, fine. Leave. Even if it were possible, I don't think the immense effort necessary to reach those goobers is worth the time and expense. We've been fighting this fight for decades, centuries really, and getting no where with them.

How we break this cycle is beyond me and apparently beyond the author. He simply wrote about a problem that's most definitely NOT news to Americans, maybe to Brits but NOT Americans, and offered no solution that's even remotely workable.

There'd be no downside. They'd go on to their reward, and the world would instantly be a much, much better place.

we make ourselves more ignorant and stupid.

I dare you. I double dog dare you. One part of wisdom is identifying and writing off a lost cause when you see it, and not continuing to waste your time and energy. But if you want to beat your head against that stone wall, pardon the pun, knock yourself out. Far better people than we have tried for decades upon decades with little effect. Bull Conner's Birmingham AL didn't disappear. It just went underground, only to reappear in 2024.

it's not about reason. It's about listening, and repeating back to them what they say, word for word, to make sure both that you've heard them correctly and also that they feel heard.

You're right, engaging is often pointless at best, especially if the situation isn't one that affords the opportunity to continue to interact with the other person over an extended period.

But if repeated interaction is possible, and if you have the patience to just listen through the first several conversations, you may find that at some point down the road they actually become receptive to hearing what you might think and feel.

It also helps to avoid the wedge issues, of course, and look for common ground; and I usually find there's plenty of that – a lot of people at both ends of the political spectrum agree that labor's been exploited for too long and/or that we've allowed too much concentration of power and/or wealth into the hands of Wall St., big Pharma, big Media, big Tech, and/or the MIC.

So another advantage of listening to people for a while before trying to persuade them of anything is to suss out the areas of potential agreement.

Greater clarity in why they want to kill us all.

Make no mistake: They are coming for our rights. They are coming for our jobs. They are coming for our air and water. They are coming for our health, wealth, and well-being. And when they have taken all that away from us, they are coming for our lives.

There is no common ground with practitioners of evil. There will not be, nor should there be, a kumbaya moment with those people.

And we did not need an article on Cletus anthropology to tell us otherwise.

But they said go back to the hood or El Barrio. Perhaps we might understand them if they tried living up to supposed American values like due process, equality, caring for our children, freedom to worship or not, healthcare for everyone and protecting our environment.

even if you manage to teach them nothing, you might learn something useful from and/or about them.

I personally find it invaluable to visit both conservative and liberal news sites, e.g., if only to figure out what what issues both sides are using to try to keep us divided, and perhaps even more importantly, what neither side wants to talk about.

There are people being picked up on the streets and shipped to overseas prisons. They are erasing my history and they don’t like me. Perhaps they should understand what it means to be an American and a caring human being. Maybe they should stop looking at Fox News because it is not news it along with a lot of mainstream outlets is propaganda. To vote for this inhuman monster who almost destroyed the country before and is going to finish the job this time ,tells me everything about them.

that simply villifying them is a path toward deeper division, not toward successful change.

My personal belief is along the lines of:

Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.

-- "Dhammapada," Ch. 1, the Twin Verses 5, as quoted by Maha Ghosananda.

My people have been hung from trees, my grandfather had to lower his head when a white woman was present or he could have met a tree. Black people have prayed , protested, died, had their rights stripped from them. I know this country everyday I see and hear what orange melon wants and conservatives approve. Native Americans genocide and placed on reservations, Hispanic people who do the jobs we don’t want to do maligned , Haitians who have been paying reparations for fighting for their freedom and is one of the poorest countries in the world. They are eating cats and dogs. And the majority of white Americans voted for this , they have voted for republicans since the civil rights movement. The most incompetent group of idiots keep saying something like DEI. The lame stream media parrots their bullshit everyday. I will live my values without compromise and I don’t give a damn what the dominant culture says to salve their egos and continue to believe in their myths.

may well be a poor use of time. But he didn't get elected without the help of a lot of people for whom economic issues were paramount -- again, an area of common ground.

I don't blame you for not wanting to talk to anyone who voted for Trump. But I still believe that liberals who want change can't afford not to try to understand why he got elected.

If you honestly believe that he got elected mainly because everyone who voted for him is despicable and irredeemable, the logical implication would seem to be that you might as well give up unless you're prepared to exterminate them. If you see another solution, I'd genuinely love to hear it.

They would be very disappointed. The stock market is being manipulated, tariffs are kicking everyone’s rear , the bond markets are scary and because of the orange man we may have a global recession. We have never been accepted as part of this country unless you needed our bodies for your wars. That has also given us a different view of this country which has never lived up to its promises.
I don’t care how much you attempt to understand them they are not going to vote for those communist democrats, they are willing to let the country burn for this demagogue. Okay. We have never tried to exterminate them, they have tried to destroy us but we will keep trying to make America better ,perhaps they should join us.

They have shown that all the things they’ve supported by voting for #Felon47 and Republicans don't balance the scales towards morality, justice, compassion, and logic. And it doesn't matter that they’ll still be loving their families, rescuing dogs, helping strangers, going to church, donating to charities: It really makes no difference. They made a devil's wager and lost their souls and their humanity.

“One can neither agree with a fascist nor be friends with one, unless one is a fascist..."
« On ne peut ni être d’accord avec un fasciste ni être son ami, à moins d’être un fasciste. »

My favourite graffiti « Aimez-vous les uns les autres, sauf les nazis. Brise leur coeur. »
Love one another, except for Nazis. Break their hearts.

Makes me also think about The Truman Show - our lives in their studio set.

for 274 pages. $26.90 on Kindle. I really want to read this, but I'll wait a month or two until it is more reasonably priced.

… about 5 miles to the west. A neighbor always carried a pistol with a round in the chamber because….
…. he had to be ready in case “a mugger” attacked him in the neighborhood which was very rural with
a crushed flint and gravel road that saw maybe 6 cars a day. The area had lots of Christo Fascist
Krasnov fans too. One barn had a mural of Trump and Jesus with their arms around each other’s
shoulders, an American flag along with a screaming eagle, and a setting sun were in the background.

I didn’t point out to the gun humper that no robber would be coming to that mountain side in the woods
of Shenandoah County, VA to rob him.