For years, I've been subscribing to multiple political party mailing lists. I've read and saved every one, sorting them into folders based on their content. So far I've really only needed three: fundraising, fallacies, and namecalling. I thought they would keep me informed and help me pick candidates during the primaries and elections.
I believe that we desperately need politicians who know how to compromise. We're getting nowhere with demagogues who follow a straight party line and refuse to bend under any circumstances. The common practice of vilifying and denigrating any person or position that varies at all from the party's is only making things worse.
We've lost the ability to think and to debate in politics.
The vast majority of political missives I receive from the Democrats and Libertarians go to the "fundraising" folder. A few of the Democrats' go in "fallacies". The Republican mails always wind up in "namecalling", with a few in "fallacies". I'm not any better informed about candidates or issues; I only know who's yelling about what.
It's all poison. I'm unsubscribing. The NRCC won't let me; pparently I'll have to mark them as spam.
I won't unsubscribe from individual political candidates. Those emails could actually help me make decisions.
90% agreement on this one. We certainly could benefit from intelligent compromise on practical matters - none on core principles.
Greater abundance of marginal thinking (will this decision make things better, worse or the same?) would be swell. That, of course, would have to include an attitude in politicians of serving the public they represent rather than themselves or their own closed organizations (oh - was that out loud?).