Is the 20% worth this much hatred?

2015-07-24T15:26:26-04:00

As I assess this country and everyone's love for it. I have to ask myself. Why are we seeing so much hatred and name calling not only on Facebook, but also here on Rally Point.

I have learned in my lifetime that Americans agree with each other 80% if the time. We see evidence of this on September 11, 2001, when Americans from every walk of life were outraged at the unprovoked attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon. Regardless of race, culture, economic background, social upbringing ALL were outraged and angry.

If you really consider that we are together on things 80% of the time. Why do we let the other 20% divide us so much. It's not any one person's fault, it's all of us.

Is that 20% going to be important in five, ten, twenty years from now?

Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. Who would have thought ten years ago, that Blockbuster would not exist. Things change. Are we as Americans going to let the 20% degrade into hatred and divide this country we all love. Nobody has the luxury of saying my way or the highway. We have to work together for the common good, come together and find viable solutions for our nations problems. We must stop the hatred and the divide. I don't care where or who it starts from, I jut want it to start!

Response by Sgt Aaron Kennedy, MS made Jul 24 at 2015 3:40 PM

2015-07-24T15:40:26-04:00

I don't even think it's 20%.

I think we agree on the vast majority of things... we disagree on the "nuances."

I'd say 95%+ of People's goals are the same. Out "methods" are probably the problem, or the philosophy to get to said goal.

As an example, no one here wants to see people die in the streets. Everyone wants everyone else to have good Health. Nobody thinks anyone else should become impoverished as a result of medical emergency, etc.

The question however is how this should be covered? Is this an individual responsibility, or a societal one, or some variation in between? The goal is and has always been the same. The method is wildly different.

Most of our issues are like that.

Response by Capt Seid Waddell made Jul 24 at 2015 3:48 PM

2015-07-24T15:48:00-04:00

I don't believe the hatred is justified, but it arises from the emergence of mutually exclusive world views that have developed since the counter-culture days of the 1960s and which have gotten progressively worse as time passes.

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made Jul 24 at 2015 4:44 PM

2015-07-24T16:44:21-04:00

There is many millions of dollars and thousands of hours spent making the divide as large and polarized as possible. It is a marketing tool applied to politics. Think in terms of Ford vs, Chevy, is there really a material difference? No. If you can make a perceptional one then you can lock a portion of your market (or electorate) into a voting pattern that prohibits them from 'defecting'.

The best way to achieve this is to discredit any conflicting information and maintain a firm propaganda stream. The smaller the group and the more they are told they are wrong the stronger the identity and more extreme the views will move. There is a big piece of psychology here about identity and ego and stuff.

Recently I began to subscribe to some more right wing news sources. I found that they were just as unreliable "the sky is falling" as any left wing. In both cases the intent is not to convert with information but to reinforce group identity. Any casual fact checking would reveal a purely tangential relationship with facts.

I feel it is a patriotic duty to learn how to identify and check information. It is sad that sites that constantly use poor information are still in business. But that is another post.

Response by CPT Jack Durish made Jul 24 at 2015 4:52 PM

2015-07-24T16:52:14-04:00

I keep hearing of "all this name calling on RallyPoint". Where is it? Yes, I've seen it in other discussion websites/weblogs. I've seen one or two rare examples on RP, but nothing to the degree I've seen it elsewhere. No, not even close. That's the main reason I dedicate most of my spare time on RP rather than those other websites/weblogs. I don't think it anything that RP is doing. I think that we are just a more civil bunch of folks.