Late night pondering.

Tonight I've been cruising through the interwebs looking up all sorts of information and amusing myself by commenting on political story boards when I was reminded of something that has been bothering me for quite awhile. As far as American politics have gone the more liberal a politician tends to be, the less likely it is that they seem to be willing to really FIGHT for what they're trying to do. In general I've gone to Bertrand Russel's observation that "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts"

I myself have been guilty of that exact same thing. As I'm sure all of you remember, for the most part I had always been pretty straight-edge atheist. But as time has gone on, and as I've learned more and more, I've been forced to stop and REALLY think about everything. I never particularly had an issue with the big bang theory until quite recently, and it has less to do with what religious people may dislike about it (the universe IS pretty goddamn complex, and it seems relatively unlikely that it all happened by chance. So there MUST be a greater power) because it's a paradox that implies if god exists, there must be a super-god that made normal god, and an ultima-god that made super-god...so on and so forth. What I've recently been having issues with however, is the most recent addition to the theory. Which revolves around gravity's effect on time. (I'm nowhere near intelligent or educated enough to give this theory the explanation it deserves, so please look it up :3) HOWEVER, I will try to explain it at least in a simple sense. Gravity effects everything, including time. Black holes have such a high-mass and high gravity that they can suck in everything, like light, hence the name. But scientists have been saying that ontop of sucking in light, black-holes can absorb time itself, slowing it to a crawl. The same thing can happen with speed (the closer an object gets to the speed of light, the "slower" time moves around it.)

So with the newest theory, time didn't exist before the big-bang, because everything within the universe was condensed into such a small point that time itself was frozen. My issue with it arises for the following.
 A. It's still implying that the universe existed before it existed. (Yeah, I understand that this is still our best explanation for everything, and that it's not necessarily what happened... I don't care, it annoys me all the same)
B. If time was incapable of escaping our universe's lil egg, how the fuck did the big bang happen? Shit should still be stuck in that one spot, forever.
C. It implies that there is something beyond the universe (and yes, I do realize that there are some people trying to remove the use of the word "universe" specifically for that reason, again, I dun care, it annoys me.)
D. Do you ever get the feeling that our species is on the verge of figuring out shit that could completely change our perspective on everything...and that our generation will die RIGHT before that point? I do. And I HATE IT.

AND THUS I HAVE STARTED TO HAVE DOUBT.

Moving onto the point of this post. It seems more and more that liberals are starting to gain the...meanness... That conservatives have had. While I certainly don't care that racists and bigots have started having to explain themselves on a national scale, and while I DO think that one of the two political parties in our  government has both the moral and historical advantage all things considered... I worry sometimes that our generation could do some real good for our country, but that we're damaging our own potential by stooping to the same level that our parents and grandparents have. (Think McCarthy.)

What I mean by that is in our country, we have lots and lots of differing opinions, but for better or worse they've all been clumped into two huge groups, liberals and conservatives. I have all sorts of complaints about our system, but what I hate the most about it, is that it is becoming easier and easier to isolate ourselves to only our own viewpoint. So when we meet a person from the other party, they seem like a fucking alien. And when you try to challenge some of their beliefs, they consider it a personal attack and they retreat back to their hidey-hole to read all the books/articles that have led to them having their beliefs, and they reaffirm to themselves that the other team is evil.

It's pretty goddamn obvious that nothing is going to really change into this country until certain areas of our country decide to open their mind a bit more.  But whenever I read some of the comments coming from people with the same beliefs as me.. I can't help but worry we're going to lose the war because we shot ourselves in the foot. The last 10 years (in my opinion...much longer, but eh) have more or less proven that many of the things conservatives hold to be true, do not work...and often times have done the exact opposite of what they were intended to do. But nothing will get better if we just scream "fascist/bigot/racist/bible thumper" instead of offering constructive criticism.

So my question to the basement group is this... How do we fix this conundrum? We can't return to the whimpy-party that rolls over whenever challenged, but we also can't turn into our "enemies."