by JACK LINDEN
I believe in the two-party system of government in this country and have lived in enough places that I am convinced of the need for it. Growing up in Kansas, I was a junior in high school before I became convinced that FDR’s first name was not an expletive. Then, while living in Colorado, I lived in a county that was in dire need of a Democratic Party, while the county to the north was in dire need of a Republican Party. I now live in a state that is in need of the new Democratic Party and in a county that is even more so.
It is time that the Republican Party, both locally and nationally, develop a new sense of reality. Currently, most members of the party are suffering from “immune deficiency disease.” In real life, such a disease often causes the victim to live in an atmospheric bubble, because the person has no immune system to fight off disease.
A lot of Republicans are suffering from the same disease, except that they are immune to new ideas. They are living in an information bubble. The Republicans need to get out of that “fake reality bubble” they are in.
In my home county, a lot of people do not travel. Oh, yes, they might go to Branson, Missouri, or maybe even to Colorado. But they never really see how other people live. They don’t even see how the people who are just down the road live. They only communicate with like-minded people. I had one of my neighbors tell me that he had never been out of Texas and sees no reason to do so. This bubble of information keeps him immune from having any new information. Differences in people stimulate different thinking.
And that is a good thing.
Part of the problem is that the vast majority of Republicans get their news from one source. It seems the Republican information machine is a circle. The information sources depend on like-minded sources to report the news and information. The radio agitators rely on one another for their topics of discussion. Their information is only derived from the Fox network, which relies on Freedom Works and World Daily News, etc. This big information circle spreads the same misinformation.
If Republicans want to remain a viable party in American politics, their leaders need to stand up to those in the “information bubble.” Any good sales person will tell you that he needs to know as much about his competitors as his own products.
I want to see a Republican Party that is the party of thinking and reasoning people. I want to see debates on issues that are critical to the American republic and not just to a group of people who listen to the same radio, watch the same television programs and read the same printed material. Unless Republicans get out of the bubble they are in, the party will die and we will see years of one-party rule.
