re: Why is the country/this board so polarized?

quote:

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Of course they do NC, but I think your analogy was to the courtroom behavior, i.e. the lawyers. At least that was the premise of my remark.

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Exactly.

Think of politicians as lawyers (because for the most part they are). Their clients are the 1% (soaked, you-didn't-build-that), the 47% (wealth-gap deprived), and everyone in between.

Americans are divided into categories and labeled. Then they are addressed gloriously by one group of politicians, while being derisively demeaned by another. For the politicians, it's all banter. For their targets (the 1%, the 47%, and everyone in between), it's personal.

While politicians enjoy a beer together at the end of a glorious immigration debate, a rancher's South Texas family is held at gunpoint by cartel coyotes transporting underage girls to be used in ElPaso brothels. It's very personal for the rancher and those immigrants.

If a politician tells me I didn't build the business that I did in fact build, I'm going to take that personally. When he tells me "somebody else did that for me," I'm going to take that very personally.

Politicians will go at it tooth and nail, then when the debate is over they'll have a drink together. They don't take it personally. For the rest of America, it can be quite a different story.