It was a great scene which affected few.

@rainmanjr The people who most needed to be affected by it most likely refused to watch it.

@TheoryNumber3 They didn't refuse. They just didn't or it made them laugh.

That is all true, but it needs the support of Congress to enable it.

@TheoryNumber3 Congressional Members read internal polling for their District and mold themselves to fit the majority of that District to stay in office. People like Gaetz or MTG reflect their voters so the Holy War @Storm1752 speaks of springs from the populace. The gQp has been building this link to religion since 1980 in a focused and strategic manner.

@rainmanjr Which brings me back to my original point re partisanship. This is a population which has been brainwashed by their leaders. So saying that republicans reflect their constituents' views is putting the horse behind the cart. However, I understand that it all meshes into a situation which is currently unsolvable under the status quo.

@TheoryNumber3 It has been brainwashed by their parents and ambitious or greedy religious figures. I would not call either one "leaders" but politicians amplified their voices. Now that we are in a transitional time that amplification is being heard.

@rainmanjr People believe what they've been taught to believe... and I think that trump opened Pandora's box of nuts and let them all out. He made racism, homophobia, and xenophobia socially correct.

@rainmanjr It springs from heavily gerrymandered districts, so their views are guaranteed to fit what the "majority" wants, and vice versa, right? Any possibilities of more moderate positions are automatically eliminated from the discussion ahead of time. So there's no need to "mold" their views at all;, unless it's to adjust them even farther to the right.
There's no mystery why compromise is now absolutely out of the question; that would be tantamount to being in league with the devil! This makes the prospect of a RADICAL takeover all the more likely. I don't think enough people realize how serious and imminent the danger really is.

You've got a lot of weird things thrown together there, don't you? What does the CIA and the "deep state" have to do with the fundamentalist Christian Republican ulra-right? Sure, the CIA started toppling governments for all the wrong reasons, maybe including Vietnam to some degree, but the Civil War? And what do you mean, the Koch Brothers used Russian rubles to do anything?
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, because without explaining yourself and making clear connections, there's nothing to react to one way or the other.

Storm1752 Ok, maybe I was riffing there. The creation of the CIA and the cold war had a lot to do with the evolution of the Deep State. As the CIA gained its own power and meshed with the rest of the military industrial complex, the power structure of the world shifted. CIA policies and decisions favored Christianity at the expense of the truth, and reinforced the secrecy and excessive classification of information to prevent release to the public. A certain amount of 'Christian Republican ultra-right' infiltration of the intelligence agencies necessarily hampered their competence. That definitely includes the racism of said 'Christian Republican ultra-right' , and that's the reference to the Civil War. The Koch family wealth largely derived from supplying oil refining equipment to eastern Europe. as I recall. Per Wiki: "In 1925, Koch had entered into a partnership with Lewis Winkler, a former employee of Universal Oil Products (now UOP LLC). Winkler developed a cracking apparatus for heavy crude oil with ostensibly no patented difference in comparison to his former employer's intellectual property; thus, in 1929, UOP sued Winkler-Koch for patent infringement. Also that year, nearly three years before the patent case went to trial, Winkler-Koch signed contracts to build petroleum distillation plants in the Soviet Union,..."

That's all tied in with corporate interests. Many resources are being depleted by the unrestricted degree of logging, air and water pollution, etc. Profits trump the public welfare every time.

@TheoryNumber3 And where do these resources go? They are used by everyone not just the wealthy. Logging is used for building houses and more people means more housing and more lumber. We need to grow and preserve more trees not cut them down. All the other examples are directly affected by an increasing demand. One reason I became a vegan was to lower my carbon footprint as animal products extract a huge amount of resources.

@JackPedigo I don't disagree with anything you said. I'm doing the same. I haven't eaten meat or poultry in over 20 years, and I eat a very minimal amount of dairy, and only organic.

@TheoryNumber3 That's great. Some of us get it. That said I just read a report in the "Atlantic" of which I had nooo idea and it highlights what I have been saying about how individuals add to the problems. It's called reverse Logistics and is about returned items. "U.S retailers took back more than $100 billion in merchandise sold online." tons of the stuff ends up in landfills. People even return large items as tractors, lawnmowers and refrigerators. [theatlantic.com]

@JackPedigo I think it's cheaper for them to toss the merchandise sometimes than to process the return. I've had amazon tell me a few times to just keep the item and they would credit my account.

@TheoryNumber3 That was covered in the report. Also, there is a concern if they resell something it will lead to merchandise devaluation (Amazon sells used books at a lower price than a new book. Every used book sold is a loss to Amazon). Still, the problem is with online buying, people can take advantage of this perk and the merchandisers have created a monster and it hurts everyone.

It's really too bad that the religious right (America's taliban) and other right wing groups seem to be the loudest. I hope that the majority of Americans do not share the same ideas. That said, I do think racism is running rampant in the country.

It's well past time! But the activists are in the minority on these issues. Most Americans are in a soporific state of accepting the status quo.