woodguru

I started interacting on right and left social media back in the late 90's because I was writing a book that was an effort to cross the divisions between what the right was thinking and what the left was thinking.

My first conclusion was that hard left liberals are every bit as impossible to talk to as those on the right who have made their minds up are...and left social media sites are rabidly intolerant against moderate points of view, they are all in or nothing.

The book had an interesting format or technique I came up with, I had a bunch of topics that I have always thought should be easy to figure out solutions to as long as the facts are understood...
...healthcare
...drug prices
...medical industry prices
...oil industry subsidies

What I was noticing was that there were two ways things were being looked at, and that the right view was being shaped by lobbyists and right wing media, and it always took into account the industry positions that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising and lobby control of republicans. The right invariably sides with corporate interests which is just weirdly r****ded.

So the book was written in two sides, the centrist position (because I do not care about the hard left extreme views) that relied on facts and data. That side had the issues in order chapter by chapter...then you flipped the book around for the perspective that included what it was that the right was thinking of in terms of why they thought what they did, and systematically correct those things that were faulty or irrelevant to the reality.

It was an approach that would seem like a good one, and by discussing a group's reasons why they were thinking the way they did, that would resonate enough to open the way for undeniable facts that countered those misconceptions.

Having discussions to figure out exactly what it was the right was thinking, or why, it became apparent that they were so short on the reasons that they couldn't clearly discuss and defend any in depth reasons, there were none. It was based on things they had heard that were total BS. Every issue like regulating drug prices or the hospital industry prices was countered with such shallow rhetoric and talking points that there was no intelligent question and response to be had.

Drug prices was things like...well prices have to be high because they put all the money into research and development, we wouldn't be the world leader in new drugs without it. Well no, actually we are not the leader, and actually the government so heavily subsidizes research that it would not end new drug development, and they do not base prices on anything as tangible as what they have spent or what the true cost of manufacturing is, they use weird metrics on what their drug "saves" the healthcare industry to where they can charge $50,000 for a drug that costs $10 to make.

To me there should be nobody that has the ability to think should be okay with these greedy drug companies raising prices from under a hundred to over seven hundred, or a chemo drug that costs $50k a week...or how about drug companies paying your doctors to prescribe drugs, is that really how a thinking person would want their doctors deciding what drugs you should be on, the one that makes them the most money?

I remember my wife asking how the book was going...I told her the republican side was a waste of time, there was no reaching them with common sense or logic, they were going to go with right wing talking points no matter what. The dem side was preaching to the choir, they already know what is going on with these things that need to be changed.

We have absurdly high medical and drug costs because of republican subservience to industries first.

I wish the right actually believed America first meant Americans first, not greedy corporations.

LogicallyRight Loc: Chicago

Coming from you that sound silly. But I read it and you were right. It was silly.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

No wonder your book never made the best seller lists?

RascalRiley Loc: Somewhere south of Detroit