How the hell did we get to this point?

From the time that Ronald Reagan first announced he was running, even though I couldn't vote yet due to my age, I knew that I liked him. Sure, I probably didn't understand all of his policy and economic talk at the age of 17, but he reminded me of my late grandfather, albeit a kinder, and funnier version of him. He had a likability factor like no one else that I had seen before, and the fact that he could be friends with people like Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House from Massachusetts, a very Liberal Democrat, impressed me.

Reagan knew that to accomplish anything during his terms as president, he had to not only convince his own party, but also others in the Democratic Party. His focus was on doing his best on behalf of this country, despite the ill-advised Iran-Contra mess he got himself into. Strong military, growing the economy, trying to provide a means to a better life for all, not just Republicans.

It was also a time where if you were a Republican, you were allowed to disagree with not only your party, but with the president. In other words, it's not what we're going through today. To paraphrase George H.W. Bush, it was a "kinder, gentler nation", something that many people now laugh at as if it's somehow weak to be kind or gentle.

That's why around 2014 or so, I went from being aligned to a specific party or movement, and decided to be an independent thinker. I vote on issues, not with parties. The cracks for me came early. I was involved in local politics, with the local GOP. After too many meetings with some old farts, of which I suppose I am now one, I decided I had heard enough talk about how horrible gay people were, how we needed to get rid of abortion, how the younger generation isn't what is used to be, etc. When I vocalized my opposition to these items, since I didn't agree with them, I was unceremoniously asked to leave, as I was a Republican In Name Only (RINO). I gladly left. Ironically, most of my friends in the GOP were like me, middle of the road Republicans who were fiscally conservative, and socially moderate.

Better said, we didn't give a shit how people, Democrat or Republican, lived their personal lives. It was a time when the GOP, like the Libertarian party, believed in smaller government, and that  government shouldn't be in the bedrooms. If you were of age, consented, and no one got hurt, who was I or anyone else to tell you how to live? If you got pregnant, even though I wasn't a fan of  abortion, I realized that women own the right to their own bodies, and my feelings about an issue didn't mandate that you felt the same. As a man, it would have been very easy for me to say that a woman shouldn't have one...but isn't that between her and her God, herself, whoever? Wouldn't I be a hypocrite telling people how to live their lives?

Yes.

Rather than MAGA, I blame the Tea Party movement in the early teens and the GOP's lack of backbone for starting to surrender their standards and their party to fringe elements, afraid that if they didn't, they wouldn't get re-elected. Seriously, anyone, in any party who surrenders their principles to hold power deserves neither moving forward.

This is not a rant against the GOP, rather, it is an explanation for how I came to be in 2024. The Democrats are not free of fault or blame by any means. I hope that this site can provide a primarily bullshit-free means of actually talking about what you believe and why, with intelligent discussion and discourse, rather than what social media has morphed into:

A swamp, a cesspool of falsehoods, rumors, innuendo, and outright lies and conspiracies based on nothing, meant to inflame but not to inform. That's what #FakeNews is, but some are eating it up as if there's a basis of truth in it. If providing bullshit is our only means of trying to destroy those that we don't like (and why are we focused on destroying people?), God help our nation. I believe, however, that we are so much better than that. I believe that we are a great country already, and need to stop making ourselves out to look like fools who want another civil war. We've already done that, and if the best we've done with our democracy is to set us back 160 years or so, then what's the point?

We either focus in tandem on fixing the real problems that plague this nation together, such as immigration, crime, shooting-sprees, cybersecurity, social security, or we'll spend the next fifty years chasing lies like the "Extra Terrestrial technology" that changes the weather.

Why are we so divisive? Because very few people can listen to anyone anymore with a differing opinion. We want to hear yes men and women that agree with us. Don't agree? I'm going to give the death penalty to you in the form of...unfriending you on Facebook. What happened to the simple, respectful, conversation with friends. Friends can't agree to disagree and be friends?

Really? That's your answer? Cover your head in sand, lose lifelong friends, because you've become what you claim others are? Intolerant. Talk about cancel culture.

Let me finish with this: if we really did have the ability to change the weather, wouldn't it be easier to send bad weather to, I don't know, the Mexican border, China, North Korea, Russia, Iran or Iraq?

Looking forward to hearing from you, whether you agree or disagree. I won't let this become a forum of bashing for the sake of bashing. Form an opinion, tell us why, stand by it, that's fine. I respect that. But I promise, this will not become Elon Musk's X where any bullshit goes. That's not free speech. It's The National Enquirer on steroids.