A Search For Something Better

I'm in the process of moving my blogs to Google's Blogsite.  The following post was originally dated March 15, 2017.

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Americans are more polarized now than I've ever seen them. I didn't think it could get any more polarized than it was when George W. Bush was in office, but here we are.

The political parties have become stereotyped into extreme positions from which they may never recover. Republicans are characterized as fascists, and Democrats are perceived as communists.  The actuality is that opinions on the many issues facing our country are not black-or-white, but a spectrum, stretching from one extreme to the other.  Like light passing through a prism, any single color blends into another with no boundary between them.

Having tired of the either-or of the major parties, the "if you're not with me, you're against me" attitude, I went looking for an alternative.  I went looking for a "Moderate Party".  The theory was that moderates examine - FULLY examine - all aspects of an issue or policy, and make intelligent, informed decisions based on the factually corroborated information available.  Far from being wishy-washy non-committals, they are as passionate about the issues and policies as the staunchest Democrat or Republican, but are not afraid to pick-and-choose what they perceive as what's best for America and its people.  They are unconstrained by the Party Line.

What I found in my search was that Moderates can be as extreme-to-the-extreme as those they criticize.  Instead of intellectuals who engage in rational examination of an issue or policy, I found just as many irrational, reactionary, and ill-informed Moderates as I saw in the two major parties.

So, I guess you could call me non-aligned.  Better yet, call me Independent.  I will continue my rational examinations of issues and policies with regard to what is best for America, in order to make informed decisions based on the (factual, verifiable, and corroborated) information available to me.  Not as a wishy-washy non-committal, but as an activist working within the system in order to enact change, and to do so within the law.  For we must now and always remain a nation of laws.  If the laws don't work, let's change them, but do so within the framework of the law.

Let's do away with extremism, and work together.  Without debate and compromise, our system of government will fail.