Political Civilian

It occurs to me that I haven't actually... debated a conservative on an actual policy matter in years. Part of that is the nature of the internet, and also that whole global pandemic thing. But you'd think that an actual, fact - based, legitimate disagreement would have materialized at some point. But it really hasn't. Here's my fantasy of what that kind of debate might look like: Liberal: Climate change is a real issue that our scientists and experts are saying could cost the world billions of lives and trillions in property damage. We need to do something. Conservative: All right. We need to be careful though, as we don't want to harm our current economy. We also have to acknowledge that it's a global problem, and engaging some policies that might slow the American economy without actually addressing the GLOBAL crisis isn't optimal. Liberal : The simplest thing to do then is to institute a carbon tax - we've helped ameliorate a different crisis by t

It was a Republican terrorist attack. Now, just about every word in that sentence is inflammatory and rude, and probably to an unnecessary degree. But it's important that the proper words be used, because as George Carlin put it, we do think in language.  And this is accurate language. Republicans committed a terrorist attack on the United States. It should also be noted that along with being rude, the big flaw in that framework is the same flaw that Republicans encounter when accusing all Muslims of being terrorists. Small, extreme groups who claim to share an affinity with a larger group that contains multitudes do NOT - at all - represent that larger group. There's a degree to which mainstream members of groups should hold their extremists accountable, but at the end of the day, they're just not representative of their outliers. That's why they're outliers. But there's a fair argument to be made that the the group that attacked the United States Capitol buil