requests

An awful lot of us are pissed off at partisanship coming from politicians — and our friends.

The ideals of a democracy where we talk to each other and are all trying to make this country better, with different views of how to make the country better, they are failing. The center is not holding.

Summary: Ending political conversations with an invite to participate in a mutual activity together seems to take the edge off.

A variety of flavors of American white nationalism are on the rise. The Republican President has waffled about how evil Nazis are, often comparing them to the people protesting them. The racism-apologist frame is that this is a free-speech fight. That people giving Hitler's sieg heil salute and Americans who oppose them, if they get into a brawl, are equally at fault.

If conservatives believe one thing, it’s that government shouldn’t be able to take your property arbitrarily. At least, that was when conservatives believed in something.
—Robert Reich, a post going to thousands of progressives, on civil forfeiture.

This act by the Trump administration is a moment when conservatives distrustful of government just might be ready to have had enough. But our progressive leaders encourage us to assume the worst right from the beginning, to reinforce and remind and conservatives that we are on two teams and our team just scored a point. This is a moment when we can instead come together, act together, be one team again, across the partisan divide.

Many people love to leave comments on social media before reading the article. This time, please do! What is your relationship with judgment in the current political climate?

Do you judge someone for comfortably voting for a man who mocks people with disabilities and brags of grabbing pussies?
Or is it wrong to judge them?

What is the most egregious and well documented part of the new health care act? Something that would speak to [almost] every decent American as needing to be fixed? Perhaps something where you have a personal story or connection?

What could be a “foot in the door” issue, if you wanted to start a conversation across party lines? Could we make a request that this one egregious part of the bill be stopped, and get good people to do so together across party lines?

Please leave your suggestions! Bonus for a story-with-footnotes style, instead of just the policy.