A conservative dips a toe in enemy territory water

A metaphor for American politics

An introduction

The post below is written by MC. I think he owns and runs the politics site I recently started posting at, Looking at the world. His philosophy for his posts, at least for politics, is that his posts will be no more than two paragraphs. That's something I don't understand. Also, either MC or the people he interacts with sees (or both?) Dissident Politics as "a website that's so far left, they left the country and Democracy". That's something else I do not understand. 

For context, my most recent post at LATW, Propaganda wars: Is America a democracy?, laid out evidence indicating that the US is a democracy. I wrote and posted about American democracy because two people at LATW called me a liar for referring to the US as a democracy. I dislike being called a liar. If I'm not mistaken, MC told me they weren't calling me a liar, so I was very confused about that. Still am confused.

MC views posting here in what some see as "enemy territory" to be an experiment. I consider me posting at LATW to be an experiment. Both of us are in experiment mode. My experiment there so far has pounded two things home, both of which I already understood but got sledgehammer reinforced anyway. 

One is that the mindset and reality that the American left and right see is vastly different and incompatible. Deep, emotional disagreement is unavoidable. 

The other is that left ↔ right communications is (a) very difficult, delicate and easily derailed, and (b) getting at the fact, truth and/or reasoning basis for deep disagreement, i.e., reaching stasis (mutual understanding), is extremely difficult. Changing minds is, as one would expect, basically impossible. Just understanding reasons for disagreement is damned hard. So hard that it bodes ill for our democracy.  

Believe it or not, American politics has degraded to a point where just trying to understand the empirical and/or rational basis for political disagreement can easily be seen as an attack or insult, and so can expressing an honestly held opinion. Getting to stasis is difficult and rare.

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MC'c post

MC writes:

Up until about a month or so I did not know that this website existed. For those who don't know, I'm a Conservative. Not a MAGA, or a Moderate but a Conservative who leans very right. Do I agree with President Trump? Voted for him three times. When he first ran there were 16 Republicans. He was my 15th choice. Only one worse than him was my former governor John Kasich. I agree with the policies but not the man personally.

I made Germaine a moderator on a website that I administrate. He makes some great points, but so far we agree to disagree. Do you need thick skin to come into a website that's 99.9999999% Right? Just like the numerous emails I get that tell me I'm crazy for coming to a website that's so far left, they left the country and Democracy.

So let's see how this plays out. In closing, If I continue to write here, My articles won't be this long. I'm one who feels that if you don't get it in the first or second paragraph, you won't get it in a twenty paragraph article.