- Joined
- Feb 29, 2012
- Messages
- 12,331
Gorgeous collection @whitewave! Gary has such beautiful gemstones. Love the colors and cuts on all of yours. And the settings! All are so beautifully done.
Thank you, @JPie. I'm trying. I may not be doing a very good job of it, especially when I get frustrated, but I'm trying to get at what is driving people emotionally to hold on to some beliefs and opinions so hard, and to talk about it more. My hope is that what is revealed are the areas where the ultimate goals of those who think they are in opposition are actually the same or very similar. The other thing I'm trying to do is show that we are not these dogmatic, black-and-white caricatures that partisan media and politicians try to paint us as to gain advantage or make money. The stuff like "All libs want socialism! All libs want open borders! All right-wingers are heartless racists!" blah blah blah. If we're not talking in some large number, calmly and rationally, about what we want and WHY, about what drives us, how will we know to question these caricatures of each other? Just in this thread, I saw some common ground between myself and @Queenie60, @redwood66, and even @Dancing Fire! They shared things that made it clear to me that they are NOT those scary caricatures, and I hope that they can see that I'm not like what right-wing media paints "libs" as either, and I'm pretty mainstream as far as lefties go. The media and politicians, frankly, have been utterly lying to us about each other to sew outrage, manipulate us, and gain money and power.
At this point, I want to look at the long game. Trump will either be gone in a year, or in 5 years, and then what? We'll all still be here (hopefully!), with a country that needs to move forward. I honestly don't want to fight about him anymore, because it's really about so, so much more than him. If we're not going to split into two countries, then we HAVE to form a coalition as a people, and frankly, I don't see why we can't IF we choose. We're all human beings; at the deepest level, the drives and motivations of the majority of us shouldn't be all that far apart. If we work from there, then the differences in our opinions about how to get there policy-wise will seem much smaller.