A great divide: Left and right battling for the nation's soul

[babylonsister]

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15480285.htm

Posted on Sun, Sep. 10, 2006

A great divide: Left and right battling for the nation's soul
A backlash against the '60s could be blamed for the polarization of political discourse.
By Dick Polman
Inquirer Political Analyst

I can't recall when I first realized that political discourse had become dangerously polarized, and that civility had gone the way of $2 gas, but I can still feel the moment when these truths were shoved in my face.

It was Oct. 1, 2003, outside a firehouse in Los Angeles. Democrats were staging a rally for Gov. Gray Davis, who was facing defeat in a recall election. Duf Sundheim, the Republican state chairman, was standing at the back of the crowd, and I went over to solicit his oppositional views. No sooner had he parted his lips to respond than protesters encircled us.

A dozen Democrats didn't like a journalist querying the enemy. "Don't talk to him!" they screamed at me, pressing closer.

I yelled back something about "free speech," they hurled phrases about the 2000 election aftermath in Florida and the "Republican lapdog press," and we sparred for several minutes until I managed to get one comment from Sundheim, who had mainly been watching my neck veins throb.

Such an episode seems typical these days, with impassioned and aggrieved armies of the left and right hunkered in their respective trenches, battling 24/7 for the nation's soul. Now the very notion of empirical truth seems imperiled.

As I survey the political landscape, in the midst of a career change, it's clear we have entered an era in which nuance seems quaint. "Blue state facts" clash with "red state facts."

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