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> I'm not sure that's relevant. If your intent is to raise the hassle and expense of owning lawnmowers, then the effect of so doing on gardening and lawn care

by aaronem 13y ago

> I'm not sure that's relevant. If your intent is to raise the hassle and expense of owning lawnmowers, then the effect of so doing on gardening and lawn care is entirely irrelevant. If your intent is to reduce the extent to which gardening and lawn care take place, it's entirely relevant. In such ambiguities originate the suspicions of the pro-lawnmower faction. As regards the rest, I think you've got cause and effect mixed up; it seems to me not so much that the "gun debate", and similar "debates", polarize American society, as that what we call American society, and in particular the politics of the United States, revolve around a conflict between two fundamentally irreconcilable perspectives on -- well, on everything, more or less. A century and a half ago, this conflict erupted into open warfare, which concluded in a decisive victory for one of the two factions; while neither side has taken up arms in any meaningful way since, the conflict itself remains unresolved, and has simmered under the surface ever since. On the other hand, the side which won that war I mentioned has done a sterling job of consolidating its gains and pushing to expand them, to the extent that it would be all but impossible for their opponents to pull off an upset by any conceivable means -- and God be thanked for that! It's the only thing which stands between our comfortable lives here in the United States, and chaos. So, on the whole, I'm satisfied. Of course, I'd be happier still if I thought the winning side had a program with a snowball's chance of actually working when implemented on a platform of some three hundred million or so human beings, but I figure that, by dint of careful neglect of my health, I can more or less ensure that I won't be around to see anything worse than, at most, the initial stages of the collapse which I expect, in the fullness of time, will arrive. Sure, I could be wrong about that, but I don't think I am -- and, in the meantime, there's Calvados, and good fellowship among friends, and even a few programming languages to work in which aren't as terrible as the rest, and who can say fairer than that?

stcredzero 13y ago
If your intent is to raise the hassle and expense of owning lawnmowers, then the effect of so doing on gardening and lawn care is entirely irrelevant. I suspect you'd agree: much proposed gun regulation is a knee-jerk in reaction to fear. Its consequences to society aren't well thought out. As regards the rest, I think you've got cause and effect mixed up Regardless of how it all got started, people talking at each other is now a part of a self-perpetuating cycle.
cdoxsey 13y ago
Not sure where you were going at the end there, but for what it's worth: modern day conservatives are not equivalent to the confederacy in the civil war. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. The issues that polarize Americans today are very different from what they were 150 years ago.
- aaronem 13y ago
  What polarizes Americans today is exactly what polarized Americans then. Any given "issue", for example gun control, means precisely as much, in the context of that conflict, as Afghanistan meant in the context of the Cold War. But you will note that at no point, in the comment to which you replied, did I give a name to either faction of which I spoke. This was quite deliberate. I have names for those factions. So do you. So does anyone who might take part in a discussion like this one. But those names aren't all that often the same, and even when they are, it usually turns out that each party has his own idea of precisely what they mean. Throwing names around, in my experience, tends very strongly to confuse the matter, rather than to clarify it. That said, I'll grant I did not expect a comment like yours. Where did you happen upon the remarkable idea that "Republican", a century and a half ago, meant anything remotely similar to what it means today?

by aaronem 13y ago

stcredzero 13y ago

If your intent is to raise the hassle and expense of owning lawnmowers, then the effect of so doing on gardening and lawn care is entirely irrelevant. I suspect you'd agree: much proposed gun regulation is a knee-jerk in reaction to fear. Its consequences to society aren't well thought out. As regards the rest, I think you've got cause and effect mixed up Regardless of how it all got started, people talking at each other is now a part of a self-perpetuating cycle.

cdoxsey 13y ago

Not sure where you were going at the end there, but for what it's worth: modern day conservatives are not equivalent to the confederacy in the civil war. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. The issues that polarize Americans today are very different from what they were 150 years ago.

aaronem 13y ago
What polarizes Americans today is exactly what polarized Americans then. Any given "issue", for example gun control, means precisely as much, in the context of that conflict, as Afghanistan meant in the context of the Cold War. But you will note that at no point, in the comment to which you replied, did I give a name to either faction of which I spoke. This was quite deliberate. I have names for those factions. So do you. So does anyone who might take part in a discussion like this one. But those names aren't all that often the same, and even when they are, it usually turns out that each party has his own idea of precisely what they mean. Throwing names around, in my experience, tends very strongly to confuse the matter, rather than to clarify it. That said, I'll grant I did not expect a comment like yours. Where did you happen upon the remarkable idea that "Republican", a century and a half ago, meant anything remotely similar to what it means today?