Re: Bush: one of the worst disasters to hit the U.S.

On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 03:10:17 GMT, "Anthony Fremont"
<spam@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
>message
>
>> Well, Win is now *starting* off-topic political posts, and
>> fencepost-dumb ones at that. This whole Democrat-Republican
>> name-calling thing is a crock; it makes as much sense as arguing over
>> Coke versus Pepsi. You'd think so-called professionals would have a
>> little more self-control.
>
>What befuddles me is that they think that they are each precisely 100%
>correct, yet they are miles apart on their viewpoints. I would expect
>that they were logically smart enough that they should recognize that
>the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Imagine my surprise. ;-)
>

The US electorate is almost evenly split. That makes sense in a system
like ours, where minority parties have zip influence, unlike a
parliamentary system.

So the parties servo their positions such that the split is almost
even. And the result is that there's not a huge substantive difference
in people or policies. Sure, one side gets the tort lawyers, and the
other gets the gun owners, but that stuff balances out.

So we have a bell-shaped curve, and right down the middle there's a
dotted line drawn, and we label the sides "Democrat" (the left side,
naturally) and "Republican". Most of the mass is in the middle, near
the line, and for most of that mass the choice to be in one party or
the other is a relatively close one. It's a fact that most people in
the USA are *not* rabidly partisan, but they're the quiet ones.

But out in the wings are the extremists, who don't get any of this.

John


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