Mercy and Forbearance

donini: . . . my takeaway has been that the common people I meet are better than their governments. 

If people in government genuinely served to the best of their ability for the betterment of their people the world would be a better place. As we all know, that is not generally the case.

Lynne, you may recall that when Obama came to office he tried to reach out to the other side. He spoke loftily about the good of the nation and working together, through compromise, for the betterment of all.
The republicans in congress shut him down completely

Jim, having an ear to both sides I really believe it's more complex than your sentence, much more complex. If only both "sides" would try to understand the concerns of each and then find middle ground. I think that's what Mohatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. sought. To alienate or cut off dialogue accomplishes nothing.

What does this mean? Individuals are better than groups? People with no authority and responsibility are better than those who have authority and responsibility? Huh?

You don’t know either of these.

Both Parties are not REMOTELY the same.

EdwardT and Tenb4me, this is a good example of the point I have been trying to make for years.

Some say that President Obama was shut down by the Republicans, others that President Obama shut down the Republicans. So here we have the crux on both sides....us against them.

This country must find middle ground or we may be doomed. What the heck is so hard about compromise?

What the heck is so hard about compromise?

Lynne, you may recall that when Obama came to office he tried to reach out to the other side. He spoke loftily about the good of the nation and working together, through compromise, for the betterment of all.
The republicans in congress shut him down completely...

My cynicism doesn’t extend to the point where I think that it doesn’t matter who is in power. The abysmal performance (in so many ways) of the Republican Party has made it an easy choice for me.

Wait, what? He told a pack of bullies to take a hike when they pushed? Oh, poor GOP... they were always so nice to the opposing side when they were in power. It must have crushed them to be told off when they pushed and tried to bully.

A lot of the right vs left thing is just a smokescreen to divert people from the fact that large corporations are picking their pockets and the rich are not paying their fair share of the govt expenditures.
The Republicans are worse but that does not make the Democrats good.

This country must find middle ground or we may be doomed. What the heck is so hard about compromise?

There’s gotta be a reason why Republican stalwarts are abdicating the party.

Bill Kristol, founder of the influential conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, is today a leading voice of Republican opposition. Political commentator and author, George Will, once a staunch, articulate defender of the conservative movement, is urging Republicans to vote against the GOP in November.

Well-known conservative commentators, David Brooks and Max Boot, along with former conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes, all advocate against the party. Says Brooks: “Today you can be a conservative or a Republican, but you can’t be both.” Boot, author of The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, now refers to his former party as the “white-nationalist party.” Sykes recently published How the Right Lost Its Mind.

Former national GOP operatives are also strident critics. Nicolle Wallace, who worked for George W. Bush and John McCain, says the party’s “volume business of misogyny is making moderate Republican women near extinct.”

Steve Schmidt, once named GOP Campaign Manager of the Year, renounced his party membership, saying the GOP is “filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders.”