I've made it clear that I'm no fan of the democratic party and really, really no fan of the Trump Party (formerly the GOP or republican party). These days, Trump Party folks are RINOs, not RRIROs (real republicans in reality only).
From what I can tell from the rhetoric of all kinds of Americans, there appear to be four main blocks of mindsets out there; left of dems (~Berners), mainstream dems, Trump Party minds and the old GOP minds. The Greens seem to overlap a lot with the left of dems group and the libertarians are so incoherent and radical that it's not clear to me what they are or what mindsets they significantly overlap with.
I am aware of a few folks (maybe ~ 3% of the population?) who appear to have mindsets that don't fit any of those very well, especially the libertarians and Trump Party party. One might call that small group pragmatic rationalists, common sense people or something like that. The pragmatists tend to downplay rigid ideology and blind tribe loyalty and look more to trying to see facts and truths with less bias and applying conscious reasoning to the facts and truths they perceive with less bias. One group I am aware of and am working with, the Common Sense Party of California seems to be generally aligned with the common sense[1] or pragmatic mindset.
That said, it seems reasonable to believe that if most people are pressed and are honest about it, about 97% of all Americans would say (1) their politics is firmly grounded in clearly seeing facts and truths with less bias and applying conscious reasoning to the perceived facts and truths with less bias, and (2) the political opposition is mostly or completely the opposite of that. People tend to see a lot of reality-and reason-detached fantasy in people they disagree with. Or, at least it seems to be that way.
This topic seems to be timely now because the political splits described above seem to be crystallizing into more easily identified or well-defined clusters of minds. In my opinion, this crystallization is driven in by a combination of dark free speech[2] (~50%), changing social and economic conditions (~40%), e.g., racial and demographic changes, and other factors (~10%).
Questions: Is the reality described above close enough to how you see reality that it feels more right than wrong? If it feels more wrong than right, then is what American going through at the moment not particularly significant for the long run and my perception just a personal thing? Is there enough discontent to support a third party given how heavily stacked electoral politics is against third parties, or are we stuck with the big two for the foreseeable future, if not forever?
Footnote:
1. Common sense is an essentially contested concept (ECC) and thus people will universally not agree on precise definitions. The intractable disagreement arises because the human mind did not evolve in such a way that there could ever be universal agreement (defined (by me) as, at least ~ 85% agreement) on ECCs.
2. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)
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