A critical observation on the comming elections

[nadinbrzezinski]

In the last two days I started one and I participated in one. Both were hot bottom issues for a certain group of the population but the parallels were stunning

One was on gaming... and whether we should have any kind of rating system or not, and how guilty parents are when they buy M rated games for little Aliza (true story, my brother, both GTA for her very mature daughter), The other was about guns and the culture and their almost knee jerk reaction (just like gamers) to the idea of licensing or any other regulation.

Now as I woke up this morning I may have had an epiphany, or you may already know it, but these two groups see politics through the lense of how this will affect me.

Now two disclaimers are needed, I do own a gun (two in fact) so licensing will directly affect me, and I work in the industry, (Paper and pencil side of it), and have to comply with certain community standards in order to sell

But enough about me... what did these two threads teach me?

All sense of community is completely gone. American society (or the microcosm I got to see here) is truly dysfunctional, and folks are truly unable to think beyond individual effects. This sense of anomie is a classic in society under stress. And it is even worst in the country side (Been readying Frank's what is the matter whit Kansas) and the posts in the gun thread were a classic of that book. We had democrats railing against gun grabbers (who incidentally were democrats,) and also repeating memes that were astounding and when called to the carpet it was amazing. These democrats will vote for the real gun grabbers any day of the week, since they are convinced I want to take their guns away, just as many of the kids who play games will vote for a republican since I will take their games away.

There are plenty of other single issue voters out there... and the problem before us, since our Presidents are not elected directly, is can we afford to basically ignore a group that mark my words, will find another reason not to vote for our candidates. (Guns, god and Gays comes to mind) But also the more profound question is are we still a nation? Nations usually share common interests, but from participating especially in the gun thread, am afraid we no longer do. There is that feeling of balkanization in the air, and can we fix it? Or should we let the country take its natural course and have whole regions go their own way as independent nations?

It also plays well into the objectives of a plutocracy that loves to keep a population divided... and at this point I am not going to make many distinctions between parties, since both parties have members and even groups that are committed to keeping wealth on one end and poverty and division on the other (And frank even makes this point about the DLC, ok, so we are not imagining things)

So from a political perspective how do you reintroduce a sense of community, where your rural gun owner will not feel under assault every time a politician opens his or her mouth, or a gamer, or insert TRIBE here.

--------------yes cross posted since the two threads were on GD