Republicans say that "the bill was too expensive and disputed the way it would be paid for with overseas contingency operations funds used to fund the war in Afghanistan. And that, Republicans argued, wouldnt amount to real savings, since the money wouldnt have been spent anyway with the war winding down by years end."
Do we have any evidence that Democrats reached across the aisle in an attempt to address these concerns? If not, I would agree with Republicans that Democrats are just being assholes and using this as fodder for their upcoming political ads to smear Republicans this Fall.
Republicans need to offer a similar bipartisan bill that addresses their major concerns...yeah, I know it will never see the light of day but at least we'll get the satisfaction of seeing their true colors.
I find this to be very interesting. It seems, on the surface, at least, that the liberals here have already diagnosed their true colors and condemn them creating the mental picture for me anyway, that you may just be slow to come to a correct conclusion. But my natural or unnatural, or even perhaps delusional desire to play fair and consider the other person's opinion with fair and unbiased openness prompts me to consider the possibility that you are right. Is it possible, I ask myself, then, if it could be that the liberals are all suffering conformational denial, rather than that your own denial has made you slow in the uptake.
But I think also of the neuroscience research that identifies conservative morality as focused the most on team play, the trait identified as a conservative manifestation to destroy the league in preference to losing.
Clearly the power of rationalization, an other identified trait more excessively identified by research as conservative than liberal, has got to factor somewhere into these things.
One would love to be open minded, conciliatory, and willing to compromise with the opposition but I am strongly of the opinion that liberals don't really get that from the other side and that the result, inevitably is war. It seems to me that conservatives, because of their range of moral standards, can't compromise with liberals because to do so would be making a compromise with evil. It is this demonization of the left, I believe, that is the real origin of all this mess.
I note that when I hit back and demonize the right as being monsters of demonization, they go absolutely apoplectic. Why do you suppose that is?
Anyway, I think I understand conservative values rather well even though I do not much share a number of them. This makes me regard the conservative notion that liberals are evil and not to be compromised with on moral grounds an anathema so profound as to threaten the nation itself. It makes them the real source of evil to be addressed and responded to as any conservative would, annihilation of the other side. You guys started it and it's up to us to put it to bed.
But I wish to be kind in my merciless and absolute commitment to higher morality and I wish to be open to any sign of real humanity from the other side. If the Republicans could put forward any kind of solution to the veterans problems, I would, thanks to your post, want to try my best to hear it.
The greatest immorality I can think of would be to become so convinced of the evil of the other that it would harm somebody who should be helped. We always become what we fear. The unconscious always manifests. In it we find our real motivations, if we can find a way to look.