Has the left/democratic party become a cult?

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If you don't use the word cult pejoratively, and examine the structure of mass delusion or belief, then I agree that those forces could provide the spark which ignites the tinder of the divide in future prospects.

That's Info Wars in a nutshell.

Republicans:
-free trade
-no "single payer" heath care
-tax cuts
-hands-off-government
-cut welfare
-pro-military

Democrats have the same policies .. but they lie to their followers ...and say they are otherwise ...

Millions of simple-minded people follow them, because, they say, "Trump is a racist".

...You may have a point about the rural/urban split, but HRC got more votes because she got mores, you appear to be implying that some sinister scheme " allowed" her to get more votes!
If anything, the imbalance of voting rights that gives a voter in the one-House member states more influence than a voter in TX or NY might be seen as " allowing " something more (Even if it's, perhaps, inherent to a concept of united " States " .)!


ones9933"]It seems like two fringe elements to me. How many regular people would follow those two leaders into a cage match? More importantly, would it matter?

I dispute that part of your thesis, but I think you have a valid argument after that. I've spent a lot of thought cycles on trying to find the real fault line in American society, and I think rural vs urban looks like the strongest candidate. It seems like left vs right, but the 2016 presidential vote colored by county made me see that divide clearly. More or less every rural county went for Trump.

The population density difference that allowed HRC to win the popular vote shocked me.[/quote]

Who says all Democrats are secretly in tune with Republicans about that list?
Millions of simple minded people follow Trump because he says he'll make America great again - - by keeping out brown people immigrants, by demonizing unpopular minorities, and by implying that prejudices are okay.

Clinton.

-She supported TPP
-She said we will never have "single payer"
-She said she wanted middle class tax cuts
-She's called the "War Machine" because of her many votes for war
-She refused to support $15 "living wage".
-She championed Bill's "welfare reform" which reduced welfare eligible

That's the Democrat party.

That's why they're called "neoliberal", because they're free-market people like many Republicans.

The left/democrates are united about Trump but little else so I would not call them that. The SJW wing might be.

I think "cult" is a better fit for a portion of the Trump voting block. They have a shared set of beliefs (Clintons, Obama, Bushes part of a globalist, "deep state" conspiracy etc.) AND they have stuck with Trump no matter what. Staying loyal is one thing but as Trump said it himself when he said his supporters would stick with him if he shot people on 5th avenue.

I didn't intend to imply that any scheme had given Hill more votes. If anything, I'd expect the voter suppression efforts in Republican-led state governments to have had the opposite effect. Some rural communities, like Native Americans living on remote reservations, trend blue. If the authorities had not made it intentionally more difficult for them to get the proper ID to vote, the map may have had some fairly large blue sections with extremely low population density. I bring up the Native Americans because their situation has gotten the least press attention, while the impact of Voter ID laws has been particularly severe for them. I wish I could remember the county and state, but it was only one example out of dozens of similar cases around the country. The county had one office to obtain an alternative Voter ID for people who didn't have a Driver's License. The office was a two-hour drive (big, rural county) from the reservation, and was open only half a day per week. That seems pretty bad, but when the reporters went to visit at the proper time, they found the office closed anyway. Who knows how many people couldn't even get a ride at the correct time, since they obviously don't have a DL themselves? The story didn't start a national movement, though, and one NPR story and an academic paper by a professor I met represent the only coverage I've seen of the impact of Voter ID laws on people who live on reservations.

To try to drag this thread back on topic, the Voter Fraud/Voter Suppression debate shows pretty clearly that one side has an aversion to literally all the peer-reviewed research and relies on truthiness for their assertions. I can't even puzzle out how to split up what appears to be an alliance of outright racists, utterly crass cynics behaving cynically, and right wingers who don't understand the economics of stopping every single one of the last twenty instances of people casting ballots under other names.

I've had people admit to me in person, after I overturn all their arguments about the existence of voter fraud to their satisfaction, that they really don't want black and brown people to vote if they can help it. That doesn't tell me anything about the frequency of that belief on the right, but they sure as hell exist.

Could you clarify what you mean please? Read literally, your post suggests that the LGBTQ community is a collective entity which is behaving in a divisive and bigoted manner.

I imagine that what you meant is that some LGBTQ individuals say things, relevant to their sexual orientation or gender identity, that you consider bigoted and divisive. Could you perhaps give example?

It's important not to tar people with broad brush strokes and judge huge numbers of people because of a few dislikeable individuals.

Well what I am trying to illustrate here is the long term effects that some of the more flawed and bigoted individuals of the LGBT community can have on the rest of the community itself.

Basically what I am saying is that the bigotws SJW's are making the LGBT community look bad in the eyes of the general public and the normal human population.


And those "few unlikable individuals" can have a huge effect on how the LGBT community is treated!

... except the Democrats aren't on the left.

That's actually true.

That's why the world needs legitimate leftism.

I have to say that isn't true at all. Perhaps a few individuals that you don't like are making you homophobic, but actually you're just one person. The LGBT+ community has never been better accepted and it is becoming more supported all the time.

You're right again.

Wouldn't it be nice if America had real leftism?

Leftistm has recently become a shadow of its former self.

You mean ruled over by a dictatorial government? No way.