A thought in honor of my father who has suffered another medical setback

I go on left wing internet sites and everyone is screaming that people on the Right are idiotic sheep serving someone else's interests, disinterested in facts and illogical to the bone. Then I go on right wing internet sites and everyone is screaming that people on the Left are idiotic sheep serving someone else's interests, disinterested in facts and illogical to the bone.

Hmm. I can't tell any difference.

Perhaps there are two distinct media realities, two sets of facts? Sure, some people on the Right really are Nazi, racist morons who also think Al Gore invented global warming. Sure, some people on the Left really are treasonous socialists who also want to send Fundamentalist Christians to re-education camp. (On the other hand, there are NO socialist, muslim presidents supporting gay marriage, a wacky oxymoron of the first order.) But most people probably share more with each other more than they think. Much more! (Almost everybody loves the smell of puppies, for example. Or everyone would give a dollar to a starving child rather than see her die on the street. Right?)

How bad does it have to get before it gets better, or is this all there is? The Oxymoronic Age is here? Is there any way out of this horrible mess?

We need another Abe Lincoln! Who else could hold this Union together in this time of incredible anger and fear AND MISUNDERSTANDING.

I do fear for this nation. The way out is NOT to shout and scream and "pick sides." The way out is NOT to say "this is not a time to compromise our values." The way out is clearly to seek to bridge this huge chasm of misunderstanding. Can anyone really believe that half of all Americans (the half on the "other team") are really as stupid as they seem? How about trying to reach across that chasm and try just a little harder to understand each other?

Do you know that if I know a person's age, gender, color and zip code I can predict their political color (red or blue) with close to 90% accuracy? So how much of this is independent reasoning? 10%! How much of this is immediate environmental socialization and bias? 90%! If I can tell you what you think if I know your neighbors, especially those who look like you and drove a similar beater for their first car, what does that tell you? You're not reasoning your way to your positions, especially not to your anger -- you're singing a team chant.

Whether I am on a leftwing or rightwing web site, I try to be respectful and ask questions to help me understand. But I am almost always rebuffed with nasty expletives, with angry invective, and with warnings to shape up (as in 1984 -- learn the party song) or go. Is that what the Right really wants? Is that what the Left really wants? To scream themselves hoarse while the other team does the same?

One lefty asked how it was that any right winger could fail to see that Pres. Obama has many good qualities. I sadly replied that the right winger, just like the left winger, was now a rabid sports fan (in this case, of the red team). Asking him to say nice things about President Obama was like asking a crazy Steelers fan to say nice things about the Packers QB right before the big game. It was no longer in his emotional vocabulary.

My old man voted for Adlai Stevenson in '52, watched Eisenhower run the country well, and switched his vote in '56. He was damn proud of Eisenhower in Little Rock! Men like my old man are leaving us -- now we have diehard reds and blues who can't even admit to a few good qualities in the leaders of the other side.

But it is even worse than that. Has anyone really thought about the vicious things being said about our First Lady? When did a First Lady become a legitimate victim of such vulgar abuse? My mother would have slapped my face, and quite rightly, if as a boy if I had said disgusting things about Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, or Lady Bird Johnson. And if you were born before 1968, I bet your mother would have done the same. So what happened to our common decency?

To this day, left wing websites continue to shout about bringing war crimes charges against Cheney. And right wing sites admit to treasonous intentions with respect to the current president of the US. Who said this is okay?

And the rest of the world (I teach global economics, so I hear these things every day) thinks America has become a nation of 300 million stupid, hooligans trampling people at a soccer game we happen to call politics. On many serious discussion forums, people from Western Europe, Turkey, and elsewhere will dismiss the opinion of a policy maker by saying, "He's just an American." That is, "He's just a rabid, self-referential egomaniac who can't name the countries on a world map." Meanwhile, it was American technology and gumption that saved those Chilean miners. But the way we act in our political sphere more than offsets the good we do in the world's eyes.

I am not denying that one side may be right and the other wrong, perhaps dead wrong. But until we bridge this horrible chasm and try to understand one another, cooperate to solve large and urgent problems, we are stuck in the middle of the road with four flat tires. So the task ahead is to reject obstructionism and angry invective and look for some middle ground on which we can walk together and get to work.

Please forward this to whomever you think could possibly care enough about this country to try just a little harder to understand the other side. I know it's hard. I am thinking of a legislative leader of the "other" team and trying to think of something nice to say, and I'm not coming up with anything... But we have to try! My old man would find something nice to say. I know it.