How do we reverse the trend?
Emerson once said, “People can forgive anything except a difference of opinion, and this has never been truer or more obvious than in this election year. I have never seen so many of my friends unable to bear to hear the opposing view, whether the subject is the Iraq war or global warming or the Patriot Act or anything else. I myself have never had to work so hard to avoid falling into anger, even hatred.
I am blessed with a variety of friends, some liberal, some conservative, some Republican, some Democrat, some (like me) sort of dissident. They mostly say, “I vote for the man, but in practice, nearly always they find their “best man (or woman) in the same political party.” And few of them have much patience for the “other side.”
Politics is inherently dualistic, because elections have winners and losers. One side will gain power and the other won’t. This makes it hard for anything political to be crafted as a win-win.. But in a healthy nation’s politics, dualism coexists with a larger sense of oneness, an active remembrance that though we might differ in our opinions, we were all fellow citizens of one common country. When dualism overwhelms the sense of oneness, a nation’s politics goes toxic.