Don, I dont have a side. Talk about putting words in someone's mouth. YOU are trying to impose an entire identity onto me. I find myself in disagreement with some aspects of both (or really, all) of what you are calling 'sides'. And I find myself in agreement with aspects of both of them as well. I have never been consistently in agreement or disagreement with any of them. My posting history contains more than ample proof of this.

I find the Democrats to be just as reprehensible in their own way as the Republicans. I find people who call themselves 'liberals' to be prone to the same kinds of limiting thought processes as people who call themselves 'conservatives'.

What I see people doing (and I've seen you do it as much as anyone else) is that people form a sense of identity around certain cultural considerations, like their political affiliation, their particular 'right/left' orientation, the news outlets they prefer, and sometimes their religious orientation. I know for a fact that the public networks actively encourage people to do this with regard to them during their pledge drives. I've seen and heard them do it many times. They tell the listeners/viewers what sort of people listen to or watch their network. They do it in a way that promotes the idea that people who watch or listen to their network are smarter, more discerning, more educated (sometimes even funnier) than the kinds of people who don't.

Outlets like FOX promote the idea that their viewers are smarter, stronger, more mature, have more common sense, and are more patriotic and better citizens. The alphabet networks market themselves to people who see themselves as 'normal'.

If we allow our sense of identity to be shaped by people who are marketing a product, we end up with the situation we're stuck with today. And evidence of the effects of this are there for anyone to see in the myriad threads here in the Mudcat between people who identify with one side or another telling everyone what people on the 'other side' are like (conservative vs liberal, FOX vs public outlets, etc.).

We need to break free of this way of thinking if we're ever going to make any of the changes this country so desperately needs. We don't need to all agree on the issues or on what we see as solutions to those issues. We just need to stop pitting ourselves against each other in opposing camps and arguing about what makes us different from the others.