Reply #163: it really surprised me

[Two Americas]

Here is what is happening, I think. The gulf is so wide that communication has broken down. Farmers here think (and not without justification) that the organic and environmental people are asking for an impossible standard or a return to hunter and gatherer living, so they tune it all out. Then, the liberals see all the farmers as "conventional" and as red necks and idiots who "are poisoning us" and therefore will not bother to learn anything about agriculture or get to know farmers. Right here on DU we have people who know nothing about agriculture, yet think they know everything and are completely resistant to learning or hearing things from the farmer's point of view.

I had no idea, coming from the Midwest, that the coast was so politically polarized, and this explains for me why the party has been stumbling so much lately. When you make the opposition, or the imagined opposition, into irredeemable evil enemies, and refuse to compromise or communicate or persuade or explain, or to listen to and empathize with others, or respect others and see that they may know more than you do, no progress can be made. The battle is no longer between left and right, it is between gentrified and non-gentrified, and this is creating opposition to the left that is unnecessary and easily overcome. The goal for too many liberals has become "being right" and seeing others as bad and wrong, and exaggerating and increasing those differences, rather than going for real world results.


on edit - It is not politically polarized on the West Coast, so much, as it is culturally polarized, and to most people outside of activist circles that looks like a divide between the haves and the have nots, with liberals appearing to side with the haves. Unfortunate, and politically very bad for the party.