LOL, I guess I can understand why someone with the handle "catfish" might be suspicious… ;) But truly, I am an Objectivist. (And truly, you may ask me anything. I might not answer every conceivable question, but within reason, I shall do my best…)

I was going to say something tongue-in-cheek about preferring to lose a Leonard Cohen (all due respect to him) than a Robert Kennedy or MLK… but then it occurs to me… we don't really have a modern analogue for those kinds of people — do we?

Or Bobby Kennedy survives to see the election.

I'm not exactly a Reaganite, but that seems dark. If we're gonna do alternate history, it seems like there are lots better we could do… for instance, instead of Hinckley being a better shot, how about Oswald being worse?

I grew up in California but live in Oregon now. The system is utterly brilliant. It should be universal.

Well, I guess I got what I deserved.

Serious question: why wouldn't you take that sort of thing seriously? Internment camps aren't just some fiction out of Hollywood; things like that have happened — in the United States, too!

I am! (Ask me anything. :) )

My formal answer would be: because just like the politicians (the good ones), you want to make the world a better place. It's not that we all have to become miniature politicians in our own lives, but that the methods the politicians use are sound, and used for good reason. We can make use of that in ordinary life.

I understand and sympathize. I'm not a politician either and neither do I like politics (if I ever had to any degree, 2016 would have been the final nail in the coffin). But over the course of my life, I've come to have respect for why (certain) politicians adopt the methods they use, why diplomats typically approach…

Solutions are hard, but I don't think analysis is easy. Or at least, intelligent analysis is not easy. And analysis needs come before solutions.

But aren't there ways of speaking truth to change people's minds? (Isn't that, in fact, the power of speaking truth?)

As I watched that play out over the months that it did, I was absolutely disgusted that more of those Republican candidates didn't drop out fast for the sake of their party — and the nation.

I've come to believe that both Sancho and Quixote are important, and I personally wish to have aspects of each. It is necessary to see things for what they are, unblinded by desire (or insanity). Yet it is also important to see things for what they might be, and sometimes to act accordingly — because there are times…

I guess I can't argue against that, as stated. Perhaps we're all acting according to larger forces we do not understand… but if I were a politician, and I wanted to get elected, I still would dismiss the "they're all racist" idea as too simplistic to be useful. And I think that, for the same reasons, we should too,…

Spot the fuck on.

To be very honest, I don't understand how your reply responds to what I've said.

Except that when the other side is just "evil," (or here: "racist," which amounts to the same thing), there's no need for self-reflection or improvement. It simplifies things. Feels good in certain respects, too.

Everyone who voted for Trump *is* a racist, or at least comfortable enough with racism that any categorical delineation is purely academic.

It's an interesting thing, and you're right to point it out: the idea of "telling it like it is" plays on both the left and the right (though how exactly "it is" and who we're likely to regard as giving it to us straight, may differ).