(UPDATE 3/23/21 I have looked at the multiple definitions in multiple dictionaries and I need to clarify what I mean by "respect." I'm talking not about admiration for someone, but about how we want to be treated. I feel like everyone deserves respect. I'm talking about treating people the way we would want to be treated; about respecting their rights; not having a double standard (like the one Senate Republicans had when it came to confirming Amy Coney Barrett in Oct. 2020 after blocking the confirmation of Merrick Garland in Feb. 2016 (they said Feb. 2016 was too close to a Presidential election and said that the winner of that election should appoint a replacement to the Supreme Court)). I hope that clears it up, but I am definitely not talking about admiring Republicans)
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UPDATE 5/18/24
1. I kind of said this below, but I've been wanting to say SOMEWHERE, something about Mike Pence (of TRUMP/PENCE 2016/2020) that I don't think a lot of people say. If it weren't for Mike Pence, we would be in a civil war right now.
2. You should read an article here. This is far from the first sign that the GOP is dragging this country into a civil war, but it has alarmed me to such a degree that I am almost tempted to retract what I am saying this post.
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President Biden campaigned as the person who could unite the country and work in a bi-partisan way. Our country is in something close to a “cold civil war” and we should worry about it getting worse. Biden might have to pursue some moderate policies because he barely has a majority in the Senate and the Dem majority in the House is small. But he should not be pursuing moderate policies in an effort to be a uniter.
The cold civil war is largely the work of republicans who have become very partisan and have decided that anything goes in politics. They already have an unfair advantage in the Senate and to a lesser degree Presidential elections because of how every state gets two senators and each state get two extra votes in the Electoral College because of the two senate seats (most of the smaller states are conservative). The police forces are largely republican and are not always professional about their job. And yet republicans talk as if they’re the oppressed in this country, instead of people of color, for example. And there’s reason to believe that many of them BELIEVE they are oppressed or are on the brink of being oppressed (see that link above).
Democrats promoting liberal and progressive policies some or most of the time are not the problem (I define liberal as to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and I discuss that more here). Republicans spreading conspiracy theories like QAnon and calling for the death of democratic politicians and invading the US Capitol as they did in Jan. are the problem. QAnon started with the idea that the Democrats and the so-called “Deep State” (bureaucrats hostile to Trump) are a cannibalistic, Satanic elite that sexually abuse children. There is nothing on the Democratic side that’s both A) so widely accepted and B) so wildly slanderous. Democratic members of congress don’t call for the death of their republican opponents but GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene HAS called for the execution of prominent Dems (a great video refuting one of the GOP arguments in her favor is here). Even during the eruption of Black Lives Matter protests last Summer violence was uncommon and it was aimed at targets other than democratic institutions- the Jan. 6th riot was aimed at overturning the results of a democratic election. (How do I know it was a democratic election? All of the dozens of republican lawsuits were either dismissed by a judge or were withdrawn. Even the Supreme Court of the US wouldn’t help Trump, and there are many statements by government officials like then-Attorney General William Barr which contradicted Trump’s claim that there was fraud on a scale large enough to explain Biden’s win)
Those are just a few examples of the many, many ways that republicans have become incredibly partisan. Biden pushing, for example, a massive COVID-19 relief bill as he’s doing now is not the kind of partisanship that’s the problem. When republicans oppose that kind of effort, I don’t see it as a problem unless they’re using the filibuster some large chunk of the time. If Biden wants to be a uniter, he just needs to not do the sort of things I described in the paragraph above and I can’t see him doing anything like that at all. He doesn’t, for example, believe in packing the Supreme Court, something that’s only questionable, not comparable to the things mentioned in that paragraph. He should act like he’s accountable to Congress and avoid the behavior we saw from Trump in his dealings with Congress. He needs to give the GOP (individually and collectively) credit when it’s due (for example, Mike Pence didn’t give in to Trump’s demands about Congress certifying the 2020 election results, or that a large majority of the House GOP voted to keep Liz Cheney in their leadership after she voted to impeach or that two apparently good COVID-19 vaccines were developed on Trump’s watch or that in 2005 the Chair of the RNC admitted that Nixon’s 1968 campaign appealed to segregationists and apologized for it). He needs to abstain from having a double standard and seriously criticize any Democratic politician or official if (and it’s a huge if) they say anything comparable to what Marjorie Taylor Greene said. Although I’m not sure what is involved with the “reconciliation” parliamentary move (it’ll probably be how Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill gets passed in the Senate) it seems like something that Democrats can’t and shouldn’t use often, just like the filibuster shouldn’t be used too often (actually, at this point I think the filibuster has been abused by the GOP and is a bad thing and that it should be gotten rid of independent of which party is in the majority of the Senate).
Biden should treat the GOP with respect, but you can disagree like crazy with someone and still treat them with respect, so he shouldn’t try to be a uniter by pushing moderate policies.
(I believe that there’s a spectrum between democratic and undemocratic and that our political system is closer to the former than the latter, and I did a post here about the different ways America can become more politically democratic (there's a similar post here))
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UPDATE 11/13/25
I need to add two more items to this post.
First, a paragraph that I wrote about the danger of a second American civil war, for a separate post should also be here:
Some times I think it might be becoming increasingly unavoidable, with Trump as President and the division that that means. His supporters simply do not believe the various sources that most of us (liberals and progressives/leftists) do and you cannot believe the things that people around Trump imply we support. That’s part of something that’s a big part of what’s wrong- there is no respect for the facts. I’m not saying that’s brand new or totally avoidable in politics, but it is much worse today than it usually is, and that worsening is 100% one-sided- CNN, for example, spends a HUGE amount of time fact-checking Trump, and spent about 5% as much time fact-checking Biden. I believe that there are some other fact-checkers out there that are also good and might possibly be more acceptable to Republicans (is it better if they’re NOT part of the media?). If it hadn’t just started requiring subscriptions I would, as I have in the past, strongly recommend the BBC News website- it’s WIDELY respected throughout the world, and it’s coverage of Northern Ireland 1997-2005 was close behind the Irish media in accuracy and not far behind how sensitive it was to the Irish perspective (if you know Anglo-Irish history and the early history of Northern Ireland, you’d understand the importance of that in coverage of The Troubles) (I say 1997-2005 because during that time each week I read an average of about 100 articles from Irish news sources (primarily the Irish News and the Irish Times) and about 25 articles from the BBC). GOPers would do a lot worse than getting their news there. I am not going to do an entire essay here on this topic and I think I have said all I have to say here about a possible second American civil war.
Second, I need to explain that I recently did something on the fringe of trying to avoid a civil war. I did a little project where I typed up something that touched on various aspects of the Prisoner of War issue (I imagine I am practically the only person who considers that an issue, but it’s very important to me and I explain why in a blogpost version of the PDF essay I put together here) The thing is, one batch of email addresses I sent it to were the “contact us” email address or the leadership addresses of six veterans organizations- three that lean a bit or a lot to the left (About Face (Iraq vets against the war), Common Defense (for progressives and liberals in the general vet population) and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (liberal, but probably includes a lot of moderates as well)) and three that lean to the right (Vietnam Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign Wars and American GI Forum (probably moderate and for Latinos and Latinas)). I focused exclusively on the POW issue but I think it had potential to make some of them more likely to listen to what I have to say on other issues (although I don’t think I got more than 10 page-views of my blog in connection with emailing veterans groups, my effort could have resulted in some of them reading significant parts of my blog).
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