Thanks Robert and I don't regret posting. I hope you can see where my anxiety comes from though.

Back to the topic at hand. Extremism is the problem. While the roots come from different sources, the outcomes are the same. I don't know if you did any reading on the Rajneeshpuram that I mentioned in my first post, but that is an interesting case as well. At some point the extremists start taking actions that potentially can do a lot of harm. Whether we are talking about mormons, muslims, protestants, etc.

This is the problem I have with Donald Trump. He is fanning the fires of extremism in a time when the country is in a precarious balance. As much as I'd hate to vote for Hillary or Bernie, I would do it to keep the Donald away from the Presidency.

This is also a flaw in our Primary Selection system. I'm not old enough to know if its been this way for a long time, but I can see the patterns within my lifetime. During the build up to the Primaries the candidates have to build their base amongst their own tribe. It becomes a no-holds barred contest in which the actual ideas of the man become buried under the rhetoric and one-upsmanship required to secure the nomination. This was my biggest problem with Mitt Romney. Mitt was about as moderate a candidate as a guy like me could hope for when he started his campaign. As the Primary season came around I watched as he very quickly changed his tone to match the conservative notes. I believe he couldn't have won the Primaries without doing so, but at the same time he lost respect among moderates and the true conservatives never really trusted him. By the time the General campaign came around he had taken such a beating on "flip flopping" that his course was set to run as an ultra rightist.

I don't follow the democrats side close enough to know if there is parity on that side of the aisle. I suspect there is.

What I see with the constant Obama bashing around me is a symptom of a broken system. The individual american no longer has the ability to affect politics. The individual american feels like he has to throw his vote to one extreme or the other or all is lost. Live in that environment long enough and you are going to get activists like the Bundy brothers popping out of the system. These guys are pretty benign as far as I can tell, but the guy who bombed the abortion clinic in Denver wasn't. The DC sniper and the anthrax mailer weren't.

I don't see a way out of this cycle we are in. The best I can do is work within my own spheres and preach moderation in politics whenever it comes up. Sometimes its too overwhelming of a job.