You make me laugh! A year wasn't enough? As to your guesses: 1) yes, 2) no, 3) maybe. I'm perfectly happy to let you have the last word on the book. :) We both know many of these topics will resurface from time to time.
We have an information problem in this country. Crazy, right? I mean all we get is information streaming non stop to our computers, televisions, phones, car radios. We should be very well informed. But a funny thing happened on the way to the public forum. Viewers and listeners began to strain out the the opposing opinion. It is now possible to get your news slanted exactly to your taste, which means being really informed is actually harder than ever. It is a lot of work to sort out truth in the midst of all the noise. On top of all that I still find myself fact checking things I hear, thanks to our new troubling brand of journalism where politicians want quote approval power before stories are published or aired.
In the aftermath of the Chick fil a dust up I heard a lot of Christians wonder aloud why Cathy's free speech had been labeled hate and why people who don't embrace the idea of gay marriage had been labeled as "haters." Well it does seem like you should be able to say you disagree with the idea of redefining marriage without necessarily having it come from a place of hate (No one ever seems to ask why the state is in the business of sanctioning relationships, but that's another blog post). The gay community can't really be against free speech, so what was going on here? My theory is that it has something to do with the video of a pastor suggesting concentration camps for gays and lesbians back in May. It reeks of "final solution" thinking. The video went viral among the gay community on Facebook and Twitter. It was with this image of Christianity fresh in their minds they heard Cathy's comments. In that context the emotional reaction is more understandable. The problem is that people who have no gay friends in their social networking tribe, or who aren't real news junkies were likely to have missed the story.
We used to all watch the same news and the same TV programs for the most part. Now the idea that we are all getting the same news presented in the same unbiased way is a fantasy. You can pick the slant you want and if you don't like the facts being presented you can just change the channel. We are increasingly polarized. This fortifying our entrenched thinking and sandbagging our thoughts against any opposing view, this growing inability to listen is dangerous. It happens across racial, party, and religious lines. You can now lose an election because you sponsored a piece of bipartisan legislation or made a public service announcement with a member of the other party.
Just how bad is it? You have probably seen this chart:
While I was fretting about this yesterday and wondering if the rational center (nonexistent on this graph ) is going to become a "no man's land" I happened upon a little glimmer of hope. No Labels: Stop Fighting. Start Fixing.
Surely there have to be some things we could all agree on. We all pretty much agree congress is doing a lousy job (the most recent approval rating poll puts it at 17%), so maybe we could all start here. We have all these wondrous miracles of communication at our fingertips. We can connect and share in the blink of an eye. Can't we figure out how to get together at our shiny new techno-water cooler and do a little problem solving?
I think the No Labels campaign looks like a great place to start. But you, I suspect, might like to quibble? :)
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