"We need to look at the big picture and stop focusing on the little bullshit that our systems and processes and those that run them want us to focus on."

What a delightful thought to behold! Matters not to me from what ideological perspective it comes because one size fits all. My key word of choice in your statement is BIG. If big means merely larger than partisan frames of reference corralling their herds, its still an improvement. In fact, when it comes to frame size, 'the more the merrier'.

There are, however, many movements in a symphony or rhapsody. I see life and language similarly. One cannot hear a movement or two and know the whole piece or sense how the movements relate to one another.

Language is a chief tool of group overseers in keeping herds contained. New, group centric terms are devised and older terms are maladapted; thereby 'watering down' original meanings via tortured logic, all dictated within the frame. Its how re-education is achieved.

My effort in responding is to run with 'big'. Discovery that there's more to the music of life than simple jingles drummed into our heads in childhood, throughout 'education', then to be sung in choruses of approved rigid melodies. We're better than that as creatures! Our respective cores scream out *to make their own music**.

Self-government has been a charade for decades. Only recently, have all masses, caught a glimpse or two of OZ. I see only three primary areas of political influence. The strongest is from a centralized top; a place our founders tried to avoid ever existing by separating and balancing power. The other two? Left and Right, largely controlled from the top but the peek at Oz has distanced ideological/theological factions of late. Fortunately for our owners, (as planned) Progressive and Conservative groups despise one another. 'Strange bedfellows' takes on a whole new dimension here. Both factions are grasping their tickets for the self government train and are discovering that all they have is each other and an empty track.. This 'big' picture is, however, still quite small and sadly will remain so because fanaticism is self-blinding and who is more blind to the Right than the Socialists and Collectivists. or to the Left than worshipers of a god that doesn't exist and a Constitution they don't understand?

My big picture has been constantly expanding for decades, with hopes that it will continue.
It isn't extrinsic; about evil kings, emperors, dictators, tyrants, injustice, punishment and terror. Those elements are all present but it is intrinsic, long standing and just as blinding as Left and Right ideologies because nobody questions it. It's a 'take it or leave it' given.

Civilization's internalized ideal of family is a familiar, 'safe-zone', regardless of family actual compositions. It is our nascent orientation on the world, instilling an internal sense of rightness, love and security, to whatever extent it is realized. It's universal. It is our mass 'go to' place for feeling good theoretically; even if we didn't experience it individually. Beneath and beyond the superficiality of 'the state', longing for our ideal of what is 'home' will ever dominate consensus in troubled times. That ideal has been more solidly embossed on the individual mind than any theolretical forms of government our kind has contrived or chosen.

Why do our best attempts to 'self-govern' decay ultimately into centralized authoritarianism? Regardless of the empire, we progress only so far down the road to freedom. Then, we become like hungry riding horses who keep trying to turn back to the barn if given 'their head'.

It is said that the family is society's 'building block'; as though family is elemental and not molecular. Not to say that decay of family structures doesn't weaken higher strata. The elemental building block of societies and institutions is individual human character structure. Male character structure, to be specific, has been the DNA - lowest common denominator - of civilizations for at least the last 6 millennia. As a self-inflicted doom, it emerged as a hostile 'coup'. What it established was stratified, exclusive ownership of everything; literally omnipotent 'government' from the top down. Male gods and male despots who invented them provided the templates.

A civilization, I assert, can't be more free and self-governing than the 'stuff' from which it is fabricated. Family defined classically (regardless of recent inroads leading nowhere to remedy), is owned by a strong male who provides for and oversees everything and everyone comprising his household. It is the channel through which love and allowances are granted to subjects based on approved conduct. It is also a place wherein misconduct is clearly defined and, if violated, swiftly punished. Family is the hallowed institution within which human character structure is most severely damaged; the manufacturer of misery because Nature's order of things has no place within it.

Ironically, the familiar is a 'default' sanctuary that masses retreat to in times of fear and want. It is the birthplace of a concept called 'cycle of abuse'.. We do know who provides our necessary fears and wants don't we? If we rejected them, we wouldn't need a protector or saviour, now would we?

Plato told us about this and the founders of our erstwhile republic knew it well.

“This and no other is the root from
which a tyrant springs; when he
first appears he is a protector.”

If humanity can ever find away to foster natural development instead of inflicting damage and return women and children to valued parity in the human family the rest will take care of itself.

Don't expect to be around for it. Big pictures take a long time.

I agree that progressives are about moving forward (with the greater good in mind), but conservatives only only want to maintain the status quo insofar as it means them personally holding on to power and money. Ultimately they are not really "conservative" because they are willing to destroy anything and everything up to and including human civilization and all living species on Earth including our own in order to achieve their aims.

I do tend to vote FOR candidates, hoping that this time I will not be disappointed. But then my dear old dad didn't used to call me "Charlie Brown" for nothing.

Please don’t combine liberalism and progressivism.

Here in SF Bay Area, liberals may donate to progressive activists but their policy may be NIMBY, not in my back yard.

For decades, Dem fundraising mail let me check boxes for conservative, moderate or liberal. Because there was no box for progressive, I refused to donate.

I now get fundraising mail from the DCCC. I write “I support Dems via church/state separation organizations” on the form and return it.

I have always seen conservatives as basically selfish and progressives as being more generous towards others and more interested in the greater good than their own self interest.

I would say liberalism is for the status quo while progressiveism is for moving forward..