I think your statements are sad and, worse, increasingly true these days. :( Although I've always voted Democrat, there have been times I've seriously thought about voting for people belonging to various other parties. While, in the end, I decided to "vote party"...I flatter myself to think that I didn't do so simply to "toe the line" that I was used to toeing. I just, in the end, decided that the candidate I prefered happened to be the Democrat--sometimes by a very narrow margin.

To me, the thing that is scariest--in religion, in politics, in day-to-day life, are those people who see issues in terms of black or white, right or wrong, good or evil.

While I spit and howl about the administration we're stuck with, I try very hard not to spit and howl at "the Republicans"...I don't always succeed, but I try.

Because we're all more than conservatives or liberals, christians or "secular humanists", straight or gay (heck, I identify as "bi"...how non-black and white can you get? Doh!). We're all far more complex than labels, and you don't have to be on any one side of any of those fences to come up with a good idea.

Or a crashingly, dangerously bad one.

So...here here to your post!

Now...how to encourage people to see the shades of gray in life without those shades of gray terrifying people back to the black and white corners? That's the challenge.