Since people started writing things down, every society has longed for a Utopia

It's had many, names..Xanadu, Shangri-La, Nirvana, Moksha, Eden, Atlantis, and many others throughout time.

It's probably because the human brain has an infinite capacity for dreaming (day and night). We seem to also have an innate sense of what's fair and unfair. Of course, MY fair, may just be YOUR unfair:)

We all want to change things to be better, and as we progress through time, we give up the ability to actually do things, to others. No one person can possess all the knowledge, energy or time to "do it all", so we are all natural delegate-ers.. Clean your room, do the dishes, mow that lawn, fix dinner, get out of bed, etc. "Mom" is the original delegate-er , but as we gain individual recognition, we all do it. We try to get others to do what we don't want to do. For US, that is a great thing, but unless we pay the person doing our chores a decent wage, our Utopian delegated chore becomes an unwelcome burden to the other person. Is there a grown up alive who did not hate something about the way they were raised, and vow to NOT ever "make their kids do whatever", and then still did it?

We always strive for "the perfect", and when we rely on electing people to "do it for us", it's only natural to be unhappy when things don't turn out. The fact that we are such a large society, makes it necessary to delegate and to elect others to act for us, but there is never going to be a Utopia, because to be Utopia, there would have to be an absence of strife. No one IN Utopia could be expected to be serene & calm unless everyone is calm & serene. Who in Utopia willingly takes on the "dirty jobs", just because they need doing? Who in Utopia can resist the natural temptations that ultimately harm other Utopians? Once conflict arises, someone or some "special" body-of-elders has to mediate. That act makes them superior and set apart from the rest, and stratification happens.

Can Utopia be stratified into better-thans, sort-of-okays and underlings?

Democrats (as a whole) usually take the side of the "little guy", even though the people who are in charge of making things happen, are anything BUT "little guys". The "fair" of Democratic philosophy has somehow become the antithesis of Republicans. Our Utopia would look very different from a Republican Utopia.. Perhaps they could be like Minneapolis-St Paul.. Utopia-Dystopia.

Rand McNally would describe them as two hopelessly flawed communities , linked by a crumbling bridge to nowhere.....but two places dearly loved by the inhabitants of each place, even though they loathe, fear and despise the other.

I'd settle for 1965 (when it was rude to discuss religion or politics in polite company, and you could believe what you heard on the 6-o'clock news) or 1995 (when there was still a little money in my 401k).

I have known people for 45 years & never knew their religion...or even their politics..

This is the ONE thing I hate about Carter's admin. They were the ones who brought all this born-again crap into the public sphere..

Be as religious as you want,,worship a toad, a toy sailboat, an invisible guy-in-the-sky...whatever..just don't tell us all about it..

Time to change my avatar!

he was a Sunday school teacher..and would be NOTHING like Nixon...but of course the media latched onto the religiosity and there was no getting away from it