I’m old enough to remember a time when political discussion with one’s friends and relatives was common and civil. I grew up in a family that talked politics, and whenever my brothers and I would get together, we would always talk politics.
No more. It’s toxic. It’s a mine field. People lose their jobs and their friends, are kicked out of their families, lose their businesses. At the very least one risks being assailed with mockery and rage, and social ostracism.
But it is pretty much all one way. Conservatives aren’t boycotting businesses or trying to get people fired or unfriending people for their political opinions or shouting down speakers we don’t agree with. They, we, don’t do that stuff. We get it done to us. Conservatives aren’t censoring and banning people on Twitter and Facebook. It’s always the left.
My uncle was a federal judge and a friend of George McGovern’s. My father was a life-long Democrat. He was also a WWII bomber pilot just like George McGovern. My Father voted for Nixon. I think that’s when it began, in the 60s.
We all pretty much used to think that the politicians and the FBI and the media were decent people doing their best. Sure, there was some corruption and incompetence, as with all human organizations, but there was no reason to go nuts about whether you were a Republican or a Democrat. But starting in the 60s and accelerating into the present, all of those institutions like the FBI and the State Department and the New York Times have turned out to be corrupt and/or incompetent to a degree we never imagined in 1956.
Everyone is angry. Who or what they are angry at varies. And then we get angry at the people who are angry for different reasons than ours. So the President, Donald Trump, is either a swamp-draining savior or a racist, Hitlerish monster. If you express a belief in the former, you will be subjected to attacks on your sanity and character from those who believe the latter. Strangely enough, it doesn’t work the other way around. There is no penalty for saying that Donald Trump is Hitler or Bozo or whatever the current in vogue insult is.
I don’t see how this gets resolved. I don’t see either side changing their minds en masse. I see the division getting wider and deeper. A real war seems wildly unlikely, but wars are fought when there is no other way to resolve the dispute. So what’s it gonna be?