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I’ve tired quite of Punch the Democrat and Judy the Republican on Facebook. I’ve been at it long enough to abandon the aisle while the mud flies overhead.

This is a short personal take on the present state of affairs in the United State but inspired by a conversation hosted in Canada, I’ve add a small plea for remembering that our seeming adversaries online are also our neighbors, and we used to talk — or we used to be able to talk — with compassion, better than superficial knowledge, and reason with the intent of grappling with difficult cultural, environmental, political, and social issues. That near past seems to me much better than this descent into hurling frequently vicious memes and slogans in every direction.

From the Awesome Conversation

Jews who vote Democratic will do so because it has been Democrats who appear to most care about distressed ordinary Americans. The Dems have blundered terribly with COVID-19, but at least they are asking questions about our cultural and social pathologies and their victims. All that takes is a walk down an urban street.

The President’s leadership in vicious demonizations and of what appears to be a supine Republican Senate has, predictably, inspired some flight into the Biden camp.

The Dems, sadly, carry the burden of the Far Out Left and the Soviet Era Communist legacy in global perception, and that’s killing them here but for one thing: the better comportment of strident moderates like Biden and Schumer (I don’t really know the camp, but I’m tired of the Republican Senate, and that’s coming from an initially conservative position in all of this).

All of this has been complicated by the COVID-19 response (please note that my liberal state’s governor is a Republican, and we have been shut down as much as any) and the creation of conditions for the peonage (slavery by way of mounting personal debt) of millions of Americans of both parties. The political reaction on both sides of the aisle: throwing money (or borrowing and spending) into the air to encourage evidently set allegiances.

We should wake up in America and Canada to regard our conversational adversaries as Americans and Canadians rather than North American extremists who (somehow) aren’t like ourselves.

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