Greetings fellow readers. It’s time for a little audience participation, and I am looking for your help. With the election behind us, the media’s first round of postmortems over, and speculation on what Donald Trump’s second administration will look like in full swing, I want to turn to a major concern I have.
Our country is increasingly polarized. I don’t need to give you examples. You can feel it. You can hear it. You can see it in polls and elections and trends. As this divide grows, it becomes self-perpetuating. The louder and more liberal the left is, the louder and more liberal it will get. The louder and more conservative the right is, the louder and more conservative it will get.
It was always the case that right-leaning media and left-leaning media would paint very different pictures about the same issue, but now it seems like we do not even share a common reality.
The traditional media bears some of the blame for this, and social media maybe even more. Research by the Pew Research Center has shown that those most vocal and involved in politics are those far to the left or right. By catering to the most vocal, all forms of media have added momentum.
Unfortunately, there are vanishing rewards (either economic or “likes”) for reporting from the middle, which is why there are fewer and fewer outlets that position themselves there. Papers like this one are trying to solve how to appeal to a readership that is purple by printing pieces from the Heritage Foundation next to op-eds from The Washington Post. This approach makes the opinion page feel more like a barbell: heavy on either end but thin through the middle.
What we are left with is a country that swings wildly from left to right and back again, with neither side trying to listen to the other. The animosity and mistrust that build up between family, friends and neighbors will tear us apart from the inside.
Nothing would make our adversaries happier than that.
I grew up in a solidly Republican family in what was reliably red Chester County. Generations on both sides of my family have been Republicans. Once upon a time, I was a precinct chair for the Durham County GOP. (That was a tough gig. Durham was North Carolina’s original “blue dot.”)
But as I grew older, I moved to the left. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has moved to the right. Neither party has excelled at compromise lately, and I find that I have become part of the problem, staking out positions that, while they seem pretty obvious to me, are completely incomprehensible to members of my former party.
And that is what brings me to the point of this column. Half of all voters just voted for Trump, and I really want to hear why, because pretending that the Democrats know better than those who voted for Trump just leaves us on the path to division, and divided we will surely fall. I’m not so egocentric that I believe that I have cornered the market on truth and reality.
The paper has generously opened up an email account for us to try to have a conversation. I am not setting any ground rules, but I am really hoping you will take the time to send thoughtful emails letting me know the specific things that you think people on “the other side” are not getting.
If you’re not sure what to say, here’s some advice from one of my middle school teachers: BS. “Be Specific.” For instance: “It was the economy” is a start, but the economy has been expanding ever since Biden took office, so more details would be helpful. Instead of saying, “I like Trump’s policies,” tell me what policies of his you like.
If enough readers can find the time to write, then we can try to distill these emails into a column or series of columns, that can hopefully help both sides in our community learn a little more about what our fellow Americans see.
Here’s the email, drop me a line: [email protected]
