My hope...... (not political, only polite dialog)
 

TRUTH will survive lies, (Dragnet, Jack Webb quote, "Give me the facts, ONLY the facts)
Americans will meet in the middle and extremes will be a thing of the past.
I love our country and hope we will survive this bump in the road.
Tone down rhetoric, research all sources.

I agree with you, but I have little hope at this point. Many historians are pointing out how similar we are today to the 1930's and the pre-civilwar days. A lot of animosity and intentional attempts to destroy the US from within.

Any of the social media conspiracy spreaders (about a dozen or so) are simply in it for the money/clicks.

Go to your local library to get access to the best resources.

Don't let anyone over 65 run for, or remain in high office.
Nothing new ever comes from old people.
Too immersed in the past.

Can we compromise at 70. With age in many cases comes wisdom. After 70 most of us not as sharp as when we were younger

IMO, no hope. THEY promote and desire the division. Even on issues where there may be compromise, they don’t in order to kept that divided issue alive.

Truly it’s sad. Sorry to be a Negative Commentary but I tend to be a Realist. And from my view, not very hopeful…. This is NOT a bump in the road. It’s pretty much a humongous hole.

We could be such a great country if it weren’t for the “Parties”. Oh, and definitely TERM LIMITS!!!

Best Government and Civics Websites and Games | Common Sense Education

Useful site.

As long as we continue to have loud, armed, violent clusters of people running around free and inciting violence, who demand that we all follow party over country, or individual over the Constitution, I will have no faith in the humanity of America.

Totally agreed, term limits for everyone, including SCOTUS, age limits for everyone (forced retirement at 65), etc. And I would not oppose only women for a few terms, men have ruled the world for thousands of years time for women to have a turn.

Absolutely agree with everything you said.

I was going to say 50 - LOL! - but, 60 would be a compromise I could get behind.

Both sides of the problem have loud, armed, violent clusters of people running around inciting violence

The intensity and the magnitude of the division is significantly greater than in a long time. The historians I referred to compare this to the divisions during the 1930's and those just before the civil war.

The largest threat to our country comes from within. (Trying to be PC). However, I do believe in FAITH OVER FEAR, and GOOD WILL TRIUMPH OVER EVIL, eventually.

True

Sadly I agree with you. Pandora’s box has been opened. Just hope I am wrong and sanity returns in time to save democracy

My polite response
Congress
I personally feel that they DO NOT represent the average man or woman anymore be it republican or democrat
They are only interested in their agenda and being reelected.
Some of you will say vote them out but the replacements are just as bad and usually are so well financed by the companies' interests that are lobbied by ... that a true reformer has no chance
Examples
Many of "our " representatives become consultants to the companies they help out with laws etc while in Congress
Why do they have their own very enhanced retirement program etc yet pass laws regarding social security when they are not on to feel the consequences of those laws ..
Term limits absolutely are needed but will never pass as the folks passing the laws don't want term limits for obvious reasons
The comment a small group of violent men...hmm i will say this politely ..would you have been against those folks who stood up to England back in the day.
Many disagreed with the revolution
Some of us feel that the country is on the wrong track for many reasons....
Here is one just one many reasons that I feel that away and i will aim at the folks in our age group
1) Most of us are very fortunate and are financially blessed to live the life style we do
but we all know we are not the norm for the senior population. We DO have it very good compared to many .
as i feel many of our fellow seniors and veterans through no fault of their own suffer financially and health care wise EVERY DAY ,
Yet we hand out hundreds of billions THATS BILLIONS of our tax dollars of foreign "aid "to other country's ...instead of taking care of own folks first many of which are veterans who fought for our country
just my polite 2 cents

We need to protect the republic which protects the minority as opposed to democracy which can become mob rule

I’ve always said, China will take America down from the inside out!

It is a sad place we are in. We can not believe anything. Laws are full of paybacks to friends and other countries. We hire irs agents to come after working Americans but won't hire extra border patrol to protect our country. We are upside down.

We need people that love our country and will work for Americans and not LIE to us.

library is antiquated. the only resources you need to get down to most of the truth are

house.gov
senate.gov

and a pot of very strong coffee... trust me you will need it.

We have been at war for many decades ... the propaganda war. It never ended with the end of the so called Cold War.

Our adversaries just discovered a new weapon - social media. That along with the young who are using it for all the wrong reasons.

Are we doomed?

So concerning when there are so many blatant lies on the air, but so few that take the time to investigate for the truth. What use to be polite debate has been exchanged for violent responses, geeez!

Polite dialogue
 

Well, I’ve done some research, not using government or main stream media data, (just follow the money) and I could tell you the problems, but I would be censored, as has happened several times in the past. Some of these “elites”are truly sick people. Just know, they are winning and we need major change.

Beware the military industrial ( media) complex
 

it's not just the office holders seeking reelection, its the multi media propaganda cartels who make billions of dollars formenting political and social crises with lies, hoaxes, slanted and edited stories, so they can keep the country divided while they take the money from all sides. This multi layered kraken has it's tentacles in all aspects of media. It needs the disfunction so it creates controversies over elections, reelections, faux congressional and senate hearings to daze and confuse its victims, us.
To kill the beast, why not emulate our southern neighbors and take away the holy grail of presidential reelection campaigns
nuff said

One nine year term for senators and one six year term for representatives. Replace one third of each body every three years. Any person would be limited to one term in each body and two terms as president in their lifetime. Eliminate all congressional re-election campaigns.

We live in a great country! I am optimistic that my children and grandchildren will continue to live in the great American Democracy. Things can often look bad in the present but our country has a habit of moving forward and coming together. John Adams threw anyone in jail who wrote articles that his administration thought was seditious. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson hated each other and wouldn’t talk for many years. We have had tumultuous periods throughout our history. We do not live today in “The worst of times.” America will make it through these bumps in the road. Keep the faith. Vote for who you think will best lead this country.

The toilet was flushed decades ago, you can't un-flush it. We're just riding the swirlie to the tank.
It's not just us, it's the world and how we've treated her.

The short reply: yes.

Social media (the mother of all oxymorons, in my opinion) is a cancer in this country. Of course, many people use it properly: my wife for example can talk to her family and friends in Thailand via FaceTime whenever the urge strikes her, as well as both of us being able to communicate face-to-face with family in Minnesota. But in my opinion the minuses of the venue outweigh the pluses. No matter how bizarre or dangerous one's beliefs might be, it is no problem to find like-minded people on the internet and communicate with them. And if what you are looking for is not information but VALIDATION (which I think all too many people are), then there is no point of view that cannot be validated through social media.

But the danger does not stop there. I understand that nefarious things have been going on only forever but the existence of social media makes it far too easy for the evil-minded among us to do what they do. Recruiting underage girls for the sex trade, for example. Set up drug deals. Arrange smash-and-grabs (there were incidents in Minnesota before we left where groups of people would all of a sudden show up in various vehicles at a big-box store, effectively raid the place of all the appliances and electronics they could carry, then run out the door with them and be gone in a matter of a few minutes; easily evading the police no matter if the police were called the minute the group began looting. And so on. Probably dozens more examples.

And let's not forget spreading hate. Back in the day, if you wanted to write, say, a letter to the editor, you sat down at a keyboard, or grabbed a pen and paper and wrote your letter. Maybe it would be printed in a week or two, maybe longer. But you knew upfront that it would be screened, maybe edited for grammar, some content deemed objectionable possibly taken out, etc. But today? Any yokel with an ax to grind or the intent to stir up negative emotions can sit down at his or her keyboard and dash off letters, opinions, and observations to this--or-that discussion group or newspaper thread that before the advent of the internet, especially as it exists today, would never have seen the light of day. And more and more those sites aren't even monitored, or rely on customer monitoring, which is a joke. Anyone who reads the "discussions" following newspaper articles know exactly what I mean by this. Hatred reigns.

Sir Winston Churchill once observed that "a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can get it's pants on". I doubt Sir Winston would have had even the slightest idea of just how right the future would prove him to be.

Maybe, but when you look at some of the young extremists, we need some of these old timers to keep the ship from sinking.

Getting back to majority rules would be helpful. Too many small groups wagging the dog.

We were never majority rules.

It's interesting to note that many, many members of local Village CDD boards were appointed at the creation of that board and continue to serve for many, many years as no one runs against them. Good or bad ??

I agree. Not all of the eligible voters, vote.

Many countries have compulsory voting. I think America would benefit if we had it also; every eligible voter in America must vote in every election or have a good reason why not. It would go a long way toward restoring confidence in our system.

Agreed, the problem is most people think they are the minority.

I have for a long time been an advocate of mandatory voting. I have spent time in Ecuador and they require all citizens to vote by law, or they are fined. They also "require" visitors to Ecuador to vote.

With all that is going on today, and how people have become entrenched in their sides lines, I am changing my mind. A long time ago a different system was proposed and debated. It has been tried in various places and various times for a couple thousand years. We even use it here in some cases.

It is called sortition. It has been argued that voting system always end up with an oligarchy (what we have today, where the rich and powerful own the government). A sortition system picks citizens are "random" so that the representatives reflect the people. This completely eliminates the presence of money from the selection process. We use this today in many community councils, in jury selections, etc.

But is it not from the past that we learn from our mistakes? Who better to learn from than those who might have lived through them. Just a thought.

Not true! Right now it is only one side who is armed and a threat. I can sense what side you are on!

I would not put too much faith in faith, or good.
Through history, the strong have always triumphed over the weak.
Only negotiations from a position of strength are worth a s**t!

The West poured $ trillions and manpower into Afghanistan.
US. Poured $Trillions and lost a generation of its finest youth in Viet Nam.
Not much past history looked at by the old men who ran those shows!
By all means consult the older, and alleged wiser generation, but let the ones who have to implement these policies decide on what actions to take.
Too many old men on end of life ego trips, dragging the world down!