I have been involved in an exchange with four other people taken from the moretprs listserv for the last 8 months or so. In order to address the issues so urgently raised, I decided to go through and put all the messages into two documents: one my material and the other my correspondent’s material (both contain a few comments from others in the group). I printed those out and read through them, annotating them in about 12 topic headings e.g. culture, poverty, my pov, the Republican/conservative pov, etc. It was a very ad hoc affair but serves my purpose of pulling all the messages together with various passages categorized thus.
Then I went through each page, cutting and pasting passages into appropriately headed documents, so now I can read everything I designated Definitions or Trump Populism or Obama’s Accomplishments. That will give me the ability to pull it all together in my head so I can start writing a judicious response. I’ve always done term papers and so forth like that and it has worked for me. I recall a paper on African Francophone literature where I read a lot of books and wrote notes on cards, then went through the cards and sorted them. Once I had done that I was able to take each pile, read it over again, refine it, and then write on it. After several drafts I had a workable paper to turn in.
In this case, I am adding several addenda, one where I give vent to my utter frustration and disgust with the whole conservative agenda at this point in our history in which I actually admit missing conservatives like President Ford, Kemp, even recognizing McCain’s contributions to our country in the political vein (he is, after all, my Senator). I needn’t agree with them to appreciate and respect them. This current crop, OTOH…………
I recently wrote an entry for this blog titled The Road to Trump. I am hardly the first old guy to review the path into the swamp we have been taking, esp since the 90s but before that, going all the way back to the 50s. Trump has ripped the mask off the notion of conservative gentility. All the crap is coming out now. We are emptying the national colostomy bag.