Things I know:
- we are humans,
- we all have kindness, courage, and good in us, but sometimes we lose these,
- we know the Golden Rule, and want others to care about each other,
- we all want to do unto others only what we wish them to do unto us,
- we are better humans when we do not, DO NOT judge others,
- we are our own best teachers, occasionally borrowing lessons from others, and
- we fear things that we should not fear, least of all each other. Fear makes us do things we know are wrong, and hurtful, and do not protect us. We need to live without fear.
I work to avoid ideologues. They don't help you make good decisions. Ideologues only want you to think what they think.
I acknowledge America's serious flaws; America has done some very evil things to peoples all over the world, e.g., attacking Iraq, creating a touchstone for ISIS, the US slavery, the Civil War, and the slaughter of American Indians. Even Tweety Twump knows America is not pure. Read William Blum's book on "America's Deadliest Export" [the American form of "Democracy"] for endless facts on America's many misdeeds.
As I grow older my "politics" migrate to my intellectual roots at Indian University from 1965-1969. There I learned a lot about how corrupt American values are, ala Viet Nam. I studied sociology at Trinty University in San Antonio, TX and learned how to translate America's and the world's bad behaviors.
Here are some things I would hope we can all agree on for governing American and for the America we hope to be:
- it is absolutely imperative America remain governed as a secular nation, emphasizing that each American can practice religion, any religion, but that no religion shall be the basis of governing principles or polices [acknowledging religion has already seeped into some governing policies like views on religion or gender identity] - if any religion is used to govern America, who chooses which one and what do they pick from the chosen religion?
- a balanced budget is good for Government, Federal and State, and good for Americans,
- the poor people are 99% honest, hard working people trying to survive, and thet are NOT poor because they are lazy,
- the welfare system often drives poor people into poverty by the way incentives are arranged, not because poor people like handouts, therefore we need a welfare system that trains people to work, allows people to have jobs, and not be removed from welfare when they work, [and we do not police what people on welfare do with their money! Yes, tax dollars pay welfare, BUT it is wrong and useless to judge people on how they spend the welfare money.]
- people of various ethnic origins, people of color, and people of different religions are not criminals because of any of these traits,
- Socialism may not be "American," but "failure" is not proven yet as a fact, in Canada, the UK, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, etc., and Federal Governments are supposed to help where states cannot help, such as in medical care for Americans. No Western country believes what Republicans believe that people can choose or not choose to have health care insurance. America, Medicare, and Social Security are already "socialism" in America, the good kind.
- States rights need to be respected, and the Federal Government should not "cherry pick" what can be owned by the states vs owned by the Feds. The Federal Government is for national defense, helping states through major disasters, and ensuring America is recognized internationally as a country of people who respect other cultures and countries.
I'd like to share a notion called "confirmation bias" with you.
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
"Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias,[Note 1] is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.[1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts.[2][3][Note 2]"
"The Trump train wreck fueled by confirmation bias"
Donald Trump doesn’t believe in hard facts, writes Rob Enderle. Trump is essentially the living definition of confirmation bias, which is a company killer and will likely be the downfall of Trump.
By Rob EnderleCIO | Aug 5, 2016 7:54 AM PT
http://www.cio.com/article/3104007/government/the-trump-train-wreck-fueled-by-confirmation-bias.html
