Soon after 9/11, Hunter Thompson wrote, "We are not at War, we are having a nervous breakdown." Although the demonization and walling-off commenced before that, it has proceeded apace to the point that I think Thompson called it right. We're losing our national mind. I hope we lose the Manichean view of each other and come to our mutual senses soon.

I'm not sure what your standards are for the media, but Lindh certainly got called a traitor a reasonable amount. (Correctly, IMO, but it did get said.)

Amen, Brother Andrew. You're spot on. As we move closer and closer to a perpetual house divided, it can't be healthy. If Clinton fails or Bush fails, America fails; it's not merely a partisan exercise. I'm just not convinced that our parties can resist the temptation (most recently overemployed by Rove) to govern to one's base while ignoring and disrespecting one's opponents. At some point, we need to shore it up and recognize that we're vested in a single nation.

"Liberals and conservatives alike are walling themselves up in echo chambers to a greater and greater degree and explaining to themselves how horrible the other side is."

You probably already know this, but this sounds a bit like "pox on both their houses", where by implication, both sides are equally to blame. I would submit that there are specific actions and - for example - accusations of treason, that show that this in this situation, the conservatives (well, can I actually call them conservatives? Perhaps it is better to say the Bush followers) are more responsible. Certainly, the 2006 elections were a repudiation, on a lot of levels, of ideologically driven litmus test partisan behavior, from Iraq to Katrina, to science to immigration, to sending Canadian citizens to Syria to be tortured.

When a movement actually starts ignoring conservative traditions, facts, etc, in pursuit of their goals, then that movement stops being conservative. I at least, don't think of the Bush-followers as conservatives anymore.

re: polarization...I'm reminded of the chapter on "The Destruction of Culture" in Chris Hedges' War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Part of the polarization going on right now is the result of many on the right adopting a wartime standard of rhetoric which aims at (if not destroying then at least) suspending cultural standards of morality, ethics, and civil rights.

I think many on the left are also shifting into a wartime mode of discourse, but in this case it has little to do with our military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and more to do with the ongoing "culture war." It's pretty clear that the gloves came off in the culture war sometime in the 1990s. As the culture war starts to spill over into every other area of politics it seems that many on the left (like bob mcmanus on ObWi) have decided that the war is real and that the left can no longer hold on to a civility that the most visible pundits on the right abandoned some time ago.

As the culture war starts to spill over into every other area of politics...

The concept of the "culture war" is itself a right wing talking point, and that tells you all you need to know as to the source for most of this overheated rhetoric.

And I agree with your characterization that liberals (such as myself) have decided to return fire (hopefully only to those righties who practice the culture war) since so much of the right does treat the political conflict as the culture war. And this is not a phenomena restricted to the right wing fringes -- mainstream right wing politicians fully embrace the concept that the political divide in this country is a culture war.

Steve,

I won't hold my breath. As can be seen towards the end of this thread, far too many people are interested only in casting blame.

Liz,

Those references all seems to be to either FoxNews or other right-leaning (or fully right wing) publications. But it's certainly possible that my memory is faulty, as the entire thing is quite a few years old now.

JC,

Indeed, when I was writing this I knew for a certainty that someone would accuse me of 'moral equivalence' or some such claptrap. And this is precisely why I expect things to only get worse. Both sides are increasingly convinced of their own moral rectitude and 'know' that it's all the other side's fault, so they can do what they want. I don't really care who started it. My concern is that nobody is interested in ending it.

nous,

That may well be the case, but I've got to wonder if it's doing anything to help or if it's just making things worse.

I don't know if it is helping or if it is making things worse. I think it is probably making things worse, but that all depends on one's faith in people.

These last few years have been, for me, an extended meditation on Camus and Algeria, with sides being drawn and people being sorted into them. It looks to me like the Prisoner's Dilemma -- we can both get out with some small cost if we just have faith that the others will not act entirely out of narrow self-interest. I don't want a culture war and a divided political environment, but it is clear to me that many people care only about the absolute right of their own cause and would prefer a straight up fight to all this sneaking around. Camus was there throughout the Algerian Civil War and he got excoriated by the Left and did not manage to change either the Right or the Separatists one iota.

So, no, I don't think it is helping, but neither do I know if it is our equivalent of 1952 or 1958. At some point the ones who want conflict will have it whatever the rest of us say.

(not to say that conflict is inevitable, but rather that once a tipping point is reached, it cannot be called back. I can only hope that we have not yet reached that tipping point, and I choose to act as if we have not.)

nous,

I fear you're correct that there is some tipping point past which we cannot avoid real conflict, which is why I keep pointing to issues like this, in the (perhaps vain) hope that people will step away from the abyss.

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