How Did We Forget How To Have Civil Discourse?

With the rise of the internet, there has been an extreme increase in the balkanization of people. We put ourselves into smaller and smaller groups that will agree with our narrow beliefs and anyone outside the group is given derogatory labels and shunned. These bubbles we create (echo chambers) severely limit our access to contradictory information that might be useful for seeing the world from a broader perspective. Anyone that dares to challenge the dominant belief is attacked without listening to anything they say no matter how true it is.

This divides people up with wedge issues (minor issues meant to drive a "wedge" between groups so they can't consolidate into effective political movements) has been going on for a long time but is now accelerating. These emotionally charged issues that cause people to react irrationally and shut down their ability to communicate with each other in a civil fashion and the media only reinforces the emotional aspects and keeps then at the front of our minds. The truth is all of these minor issues can almost always be solved on an individual or local level and we have much much more in common than not. The establishment needs these issues to stay at the forefront of our minds so we do not realize how the big issues that affect us all could bring us together and actually force changes in the power structures current agenda.

The right and left have devolved to a point that the police are needed to keep the separate or violence will break out. Both sides are being manipulated and stirred into a frenzy so they can not reason anymore. Most of the important issues were resolved a long time ago. People have the basic freedom that comes from the natural order of the world. People don't have the right to be the aggressor but have the right to defend from aggression. We don't have the right to attack other nations but have the right to defend ourselves from foreign aggression. These are the things we all have in common. Things like transgender bathroom and such are non-issues to distract from all the real abuses of our human rights that are going on.

It is time we find allies from across the political spectrum, anyone sane enough to acknowledge these basic laws of nature should be an ally and those that don't should be ignored as the childish attention seekers they are. We should listen to rational people from all different backgrounds/groups and it will become immediately clear that the issues they care about, by and large, are the same issues we do. Where we disagree are insignificant compared to the large threats we face to our natural rights.

It's time we start to branch out to the "others" and treat each other with respect, understand our difference but rally around our shared values. Only by joining together and not letting the fringe wedge issues divide us can we fight against the slow but relentless loss of our freedom.

Thanks for reading :)

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