Are We REALLY More Polarized Than Ever?

I hear it all the time: "We've never been so polarized.  Politics today is more contentious than ever. It divides friends, families, even total strangers, like never before."

I hear this mostly from people who call themselves moderates or centrists but sometimes even from people who clearly lean in one direction or the other politically.

And I've thought a lot about these concerns. My intimal reaction has been "Hasn't politics always been messy and dirty and terminally contentious?" Growing up alongside my dad, who was a foot soldier for a political machine that played urban hardball, I heard and saw things that would unhinge the most stoic jaw. And, I watched grown men cry on election night.

But maybe all that just made me insensitive or even cynical.

Then, I came across a book called How To Talk To Practically Anybody About Practically Anything written by the late Barbara Walters, a once famous TV personality. And, there it was right in the middle of the book:

Today [politics] is the hottest, most dangerous subject in the land. It's not only a conversation-wrecker, it's a friendship-wrecker, a family-wrecker, a job-wrecker, a future-wrecker. If we could harness the destructive energy of disagreements over politics, we wouldn't need the bomb.

Pretty powerful stuff, huh? But, there's more. Walters continues:

I'm afraid that what is happening in this age of radicalizing opinions is that we are beginning to cancel one another out on the basis of our political beliefs. If the other person's conviction coincide with ours, he's an all-round great guy. If not, then his good humor, his tenderness with his crippled mother and his support of the symphony count for nothing.

Folks, Barbara Walters wrote these words in 1970. That was 56 years ago!

So, it seems there's nothing new about politics being polarizing, bitter, contentious and even destructive. This was the case way before Donald Trump -- or even Biden, or Obama, or Carter or LBJ. And, it seems to have been the case through six tumultuous decades.

Politics, like democracy itself, is a raucous, rocky, messy business. But, it is decidedly worth it because it's a means to an end -- the end being self-government of, by and for we the people. And people are only human. We're imperfect works in progress. Bottom line: stop whining and deal with it.