disagreement as we might think, then. That helps me understand your perspective, particularly the "two fights and I fight them both" part. It must feel like playing three-dimensional chess -- against yourself!

I totally get it because I've been there myself, through most the game's phases: young optimism and exuberance, primary frustration, redoubling my tactical study and debate -- weighing if it's better to register with the lesser or greater evil, or not at all, to either woo, infiltrate and subsume the enemy or build an army to shock and awe them into surrender and humiliation, etc., sacrificing one's own ambitions for the greater advantage of the cause, keeping secrets while spying to discover what the enemy is up to, framing the enemy in the worst possible light to win hearts and minds from the populace, etc.

Without intending it, it's all very war-like.
War isn't compatible with true social progress in anything else we do, so why believe it ever will be in our election politics? Take the HP governance scandal - is there really any such thing as an ethical leak probe of one's own colleagues, or did you lose the moment you turn them into enemies and start fighting them? A house divided against itself cannot stand, and all that -- if the political war between Rs and Ds CANNOT possibly bring us together in the peaceful, prosperous society we all supposedly are fighting to share, then isn't that war against each other a lie, and aren't we all lying to ourselves when we perpetuate the fight?

I feel like we've been fighting each other so long that it's not about fighting for competing goals or visions any more, as much as it is the fight itself. So much invested that it's the only way of life we can imagine, and so we soldier on. I see no victory in that and I've begun to listen closely to the war rhetoric (war on terror and also war in Iraq) for clues and analogies to any workable alternatives that progressives tend to see in real fights to the death, that might translate into social strategies to end partisan wars.

Stuff like a Dem quoting (was it a female MO Senate candidate to Tim Russert?) the old line about "when you're in a hole the first thing is to stop digging." I stopped digging 20 years ago but I'm not in the hole alone, and dirt is flying all around me.

IF it's really completely hopeless, and we always must be at war among ourselves just because we're human, then progressive thinkers can at least admit it to ourselves and figure out how to integrate THAT into our world view. It would be more honest.