Talk to me

Last night channel 13 had the audacity to pre-empted my favorite mindless weeknight re-run show, Three & a Half Men for some stoopid baseball game. I went channel surfing and ended up on The Rachel Maddox Show on MSNBC. I’ve been a fan of hers for a while but had only ever seen her spots on YouTube and the like, I’d never sat and watched the show. I was surprised to find out that it’s basically the left's version of Fox News. The same type of hyperbolic ‘reporting’ with the same exaggerations and spin, just the opposite side of the political spectrum.

The political parties in this country have done a great job of dividing its citizen is into basically two camps. They divide us to such an extreme that we don’t even talk or listen to each other. I think Senator McCain was truly surprised when participants of his rallies started yelling things like “Terrorist” and “Kill Him”. He shouldn't be surprised. The parties have used divisive politics for years. They have us so neatly divided into different camps that we nearly split 50-50.

We let them get away with it. It only serves their immediate purposes which is to get elected. Lord knows they don’t give a rats ass after that. But what they are fostering is a nation the grows to distrust the ‘other half’ more and more each year. To the point where we don’t even communicate. We just listen to the sound bites and lies and half truths. They’re creating the atmosphere for the political version of ‘The Perfect Storm’.

Where will these politicians be when America becomes so bloated with this misinformation, so untrusting of their fellow countrymen that they can only withdraw to their own ‘safe’ camp?

What we’ll have then will be culture wars. Them against us. Fighting because each side thinks their in the right and that opposing veiws are wrong. They'd rather we fight each other rather then to look at the man behind the curtain pulling the strings.

It’s a ticking time bomb that they've built for their own greedy purposes. Trust me, they won’t have the words or the power to diffuse it.

I had a chat with a friend a few weeks ago. She’s decidedly on the right politically. I am pretty far to the left. While I knew where she stood politically I’d always thought it best to ‘let sleeping dogs lay’ because I value her friendship and I know I can get rather passionate about these things. We chatted via IM for just about an hour. The more we typed, the more I learned that we really aren’t that far apart politically. We found more to agree on then we did to disagree.

All it takes is a little effort to reach out and communicate.