How can the growing rift between liberals and conservatives in the United States be bridged?

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I wouldn’t even want to try.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how the American news cycle and political divisions serve the purposes of popular sovereignty, and trying to draw a thread of history through the centuries all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, where the practice of democracy began.

The main question I’ve been trying to answer is, does the current American political climate represent an evolution or a regression? And the more I look at it, the more I realize that this state of affairs is an unmitigated improvement.

Americans are more engaged than ever in the running of their country. And the media is more responsive than ever to the whims of the American populace. And our politicians’ and government officials’ jobs are more driven than ever by this dynamic.

If there’s one thing I learned being on the Internet for as long as I have, watching social dynamics play themselves out in Internet fora, large and small, it’s that people need something to discuss, or they’re not going to pay attention. That outrage is manufactured, that sides are defined, that Americans are riled up, is a good thing and not a bad one. It means more attention gets paid to the issues.

The Breitbarts and CNNs are doing America a valuable public service, if a very ugly one.

So the biggest charge laid at the feet of the news media these days is that of misrepresenting the truth. Fake news. This is another dynamic I played close attention to over the last 20 years or so I’ve been participating in online discussion. Irrationality in humans, when brought to the surface, say through a news cycle, means everyone involved gets to pay attention for a brief spell, and that attention all by itself has the effect of reducing the irrationality.

Ugly, self-serving viewpoints have fewer places to hide after a news media cycle brings them to light. America as a whole is less racist than it was 10 years ago, as a direct result of Black Lives Matter. We’re more aware of micro-aggressions, of bullying, of privilege. These are things I had no idea what they were before they were brought to public awareness.

The only thing “solving the problem of the growing rift between liberals and conservatives in our country” would do is make fewer people talk about it. Fewer issues be brought to awareness.

I want more of this sort of discourse and debate. It reminds me a lot of how minds work in general. Out of the fog of the undercurrent of mental activity, thoughts get formed and related to each other. Problems don’t get solved, but they do get worked on. Eventually the person learns to better handle things.