About GASP^™

Abortion is as divisive an issue as ever. Healthcare costs have become less and less affordable since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed. Comprehensive immigration reform, gun ownership rights versus public safety regulations, the national debt ... why do these same problems only get worse with each new administration?

Recent polling from the Pew Research Center shows that roughly 58% of U.S. adults hold an unfavorable view of the Republican Party, and a nearly identical 59% view the Democratic Party unfavorably. 45% of Americans now identify as political independents. It's more popular than ever to blame our problems on the fact that two major parties hold the monopoly on politics in America.

Some believe that independent candidates are the answer and they could be, but it depends what we're expecting of them. A prevailing thought is that more elected independents could use their deciding votes as leverage to force both major parties to be more moderate. That seems valid but is moderation the right answer? Without clear direction, moderate essentially means middle ground, or splitting the difference. What's the middle ground on abortion or allowing other countries to develop nuclear weapons?

If one party wants to close the southern border and the other party wants open borders, how do you split the difference? Keep it open except on weekends and holidays? One side gets a different version of what they want while the other side gets a different version of what they don't want. If we don't want something, we're unlikely to accept a different version of it. That's why middle ground offers get rejected.

Voting for independents doesn't fix the middle ground problem, it simply changes the location of middle ground. If an independent wants open borders or closed borders, they would just tip the scales in favor of one side or the other. But what if they want to keep pre-authorized entry only? What's the middle ground between completely open and open with restrictions? What's the middle ground between completely closed and open with restrictions?

By themselves, independent candidates don't address the main problem - we have representatives but no one can adequately represent us because we can't agree on what we want. And if we can't come to agreements, why should they?

Not being able to reach agreements is what's really failing us. It won't matter if we have a two-party system, a three-party system, or a twenty-party system because without a fair and consistent process for establishing common agreements, we're still stuck with middle ground.

A fair and consistent process for establishing common agreements doesn't exist because it requires something else that doesn't exist - common ground. And common ground doesn't exist because we've always conflated it with middle ground. Whereas middle ground is about splitting the difference, common ground is about factoring in those differences to establish common agreements. Common ground is about exposing the objectives that things like open borders and closed borders are intended to achieve, and identifying the objectives we have in common. From there, it's about coming up with actions to achieve those common objectives. Commitment to carrying out those actions becomes a general agreement.

GASP is a solutions platform, a community and a common ground framework that enables us to work through our differences to reach a general agreement on our path forward. It creates guidance and defines accountability for our leaders in the form of a Common Agreements Roadmap (CAR) that tells them how to represent us. Independent candidates will have what they need to be part of the solution. Our pledge to withhold votes from candidates who won't commit to the CAR, and consistently demonstrate commitment to the car, completes the solution.

Whenever we argue about anything, all we're ever doing is arguing about what we want and why, how we can get it, what's right and what's wrong, and why our exceptions are justified. Those are objectives (intent), actions, principles (rules) and assertions (reasons for exceptions). Follow an argument carefully with this in mind and you'll be able to classify everything being thrown out there as one of those four things. How those things are used determine whether a discussion reaches a conclusion, or devolves into an argument. When it's about politics, it's almost always the latter.

Opposing actions don't necessarily mean opposing objectives. People arguing for open borders and closed borders might both want safe communities and economic opportunity. Identifying those shared objectives gives us something to work toward, but we need to agree on which actions are acceptable and the rules that must be enforced.

The worst arguments are the circular ones. These happen when we use objectives to justify actions. Obama did what he wanted because his objective was "to do the right thing". Then in his first term, Trump did whatever he wanted because he was making America great again. Biden was building back better. Now Trump has a bunch of objectives in his big beautiful bill. But having objectives, good or bad, doesn't allow you to do whatever you want. Objectives never justify actions. Arguments go in circles when one side tells the other side they can't do something, and the other side says they can because fill in the objective. We want this so we can do that, and that is justified because we want this. Circular arguments go nowhere, except in circles.

When we use objectives to justify actions, we're saying the rules are for thee, but not for me. Our objectives are noble and allow us to bypass the rules. Yours, not so much. We even build straw men and accuse people of having malicious objectives altogether. This allows us to use double standards, making arguments go in circles.

When it's convenient, we just change the rules. Sometimes the rule is equality. Sometimes it's equity. Sometimes it’s personal freedom. Sometimes it’s protecting others. Changing the rules when it's convenient makes arguments go in bigger, uglier circles because now we're moving the target. Now we're adding twists and turns, doubling back and side stepping before it gets back to the beginning.

In the rare cases where we apply the rules consistently, we argue for exceptions. Yes, this action is against the rules but fill in the exception. Sometimes exceptions are valid and justified. Most times, it's just an attempt to rationalize our way past the rules. Rationalizing illegitimate exceptions makes arguments meander off into the horizon. The only good thing about these types of arguments is they eventually run out of gas.

Think of all this as having a box of tools, but not knowing what they are and how to use them. Whenever something breaks, we just pull out a tool and start twisting and whacking things.

Now imagine if someone starts twisting and whacking things (actions) that affect you. "Stop, you can't just twist and whack things" (principle). "Yes, I can, because I'm trying to fix something" (objective). "You're only going to make it worse". "But we have to try something and I'll stop if it gets worse" (making exceptions to the no randomly twisting and whacking things rule).

It might seem like our arguments are too complex for them to boil down to these basic elements and mistakes, but they do. The abortion issue is might be the most difficult one, but it boils down to a basic assertion: when is a life a life? That's it. There's absolutely no excuse for our arguments to go all over the place, but they do because of everything explained above. Having abortions isn't an objective. Dismantling the patriarchy might be the objective. One action we can take to achieve that objective is to guarantee that a woman has the right to an abortion, so men don't get to make a life-altering decision for them. But the action of abortion violates a basic moral principle that prohibits the taking of a life, so we get to the question: when is a life a life?

Stating that an embryo isn't a life is making an assertion. But what happens when we don't agree on an assertion? For better or worse, we're a democracy and the majority decides. This is why it's supremely important to identify the elements, understand how they connect to each other, and have decision-making controls in place - we all need to know how to use the tools correctly or else we make the problem worse. If the majority agree that an embryo isn't a life, then there's no violation. If most people believe an embryo is a life, the assertion is rejected. We have to bide by whatever gets decided or else there's essentially no rules at all, and everything becomes a contest of who can hold out the longest or force the other side to back down. There would no longer be a democratic process and that would be the true death of democracy.

If the majority agree that an embryo is a life, that would make abortion a violation of a common principle, and we'd need a convincing reason to make an exception. There are compelling reasons to be made, and they should be measured and evaluated, but the decision to approve the exception must still be a collective decision. Why? Because if everyone is allowed to make exceptions without other people's consent, that's the same thing as having no rules, making everything a contest of strength and will, and the true death of democracy.

Rejections don't have to be permanent. We can continue pressing our point until enough people change their minds and swing the decision the other way. But we need to stop bullying people into it and we definitely need administrations to stop abusing executive powers to force things that aren't democratically accepted.

Being able to recognize the elements of an argument is the first part. Knowing where they fit and how to work with them is the second part. The final part is having a framework and platform for working on them together, to reach general agreements on how to solve our problems. Welcome to GASP. Please stick around because your voice and your vote could make all the difference.

To find common ground, we must consider the most pertinent elements of agreement that people might have in common. Those elements are objectives, principles, and actions (OPA!), and they're the basic structures of a common ground framework.

• “We need to dismantle the patriarchy and achieve true gender equality.” That's an objective. We can disagree about what it means, but it expresses something someone wants to achieve, and achieving it requires serveral actions.
• “Abortions need to be outlawed.” That's an action. It tells us what someone wants done, but not what they're trying to achieve. Preventing the loss of unborn lives would be their objective.
• “Outlawing abortions violates women's right to decide what happens to their own bodies.” That's a claim that the action violates a principle: people should have authority over their own bodies.
• “But protecting unborn lives justifies restricting that authority.” That's an assertion being used to justify an exception. It doesn't settle whether the exception should be accepted. It identifies the exception we're actually being asked to consider.

Submit objectives, principles and actions for the community to consider. This is your chance to convince others to support the things that matter to you. It could be a destination we haven't considered or a moral boundary you want people to stop crossing. You might propose an action that becomes an actual solution. Just put it out there. Take a look at what's already there before submitting a proposal as a similar proposal might already exist.

After adding a title and details, select Review Proposal. Justina, our AI justifications analyst, will review what you've written and provide suggestions on how to strengthen your proposal. What gets published is up to you.

An objective tells us where we want to go. A collaboration is where we work together to come up wth a plan on how to get there. It's constructed with OPA! elements and all collaborations are directly derived from objectives that have received the most support.

This is what common ground looks like. It's not perfect but it's more likely to lead to the achievement of our objectives than just voting for leaders and hoping for the best, or looking for a moderate middle ground. The only thing that gets compromised on common ground is how to get somewhere. We relentlessly strive to achieve our objectives without creating conflict and division, something that mob rule and forcing unjustified actions have been doing for almost two decades now. To better understand this, it helps to shift your thinking from "right or wrong" to "wrong or not". They mean the same thing but the latter helps us see things from a clearer perspective. Right is simply the absence of wrong. We can't do something wrong and claim to be right at the same time. Brute force actions are wrong. Mob rule is wrong. Moderation, or middle ground, doesn't get us to our desired destinations. Common ground is the best and fairest way forward, and GASP makes working together on common ground as easy as checking our email.

Collaborations let us pick our destinations and plot the best routes. Public measures are what government is already proposing or doing, but with no procedural adherence to our common values and morals. That makes collaborations preferrable over public measures, but for our collaborative efforts to have any chance of being implemented, we must have have a say in whether or not a public measure gets implemented first. A public measure could easily take us on a route we wanted to avoid to get to the same destination. And if history is any indication, a public measure isn't likely to get us even halfway there. Luckily, GASP makes reaching general agreement on public measures even easier than participating in collaborations. Here's the rule of thumb: if a platform proposal and a public measure share the same destination, prioritize the platform proposal if a valid route has been agreed on.

Public measures are included in the CAR along with our expectations on what to do with them.

The Common Agreement Roadmap (CAR) is our prioritized list of objectives and the acceptable actions needed to achieve them. It's a formal declaration of our demands of government, and defines what we will hold them accountable to.