Russia wants us divided! A divided America is weakened leaving Russia to wield greater power in the world, a world that would be ruled by ruthless oligarchs. They find our divisions online and then magnify them to the nth degree fueling greater division causing each side to dig in deeper and become highly susceptible to fake memes that deride the other.
The extent of this created division became flagrantly apparent when a reader sent me a Wikipedia link, with no other discussion, to “antifa” (an extreme left group) in response to my blog called “Why do Conservatives Hate Liberals?” That would be like me saying that all conservatives are like Timothy McVeigh or David Duke! This response leaves no middle ground for productive discourse. Pushing perceptions of all liberals and all conservatives to the radical ends offers no hope of resolution and compromise.
According to Hidden Tribes by More in Common, the far left is made up of about 8% of Americans while the far right is about 6%. However, “…a less ridged still dogmatic right…” make up about 19%. That leaves the moderates at about 67% which Hidden Tribes refers to as the “exhausted majority.” So the reader mentioned above is grouping 67% of Americans with the radical left 8%.
Conservative media is perpetuating this binary thinking for those on the right. They’re led to believe you’re either a conservative like them or a left-wing violent radical. And anything that counters this belief is fake news created by the liberal media and the deep state. The sixty-seven percent are waiting to have reality-based discussions. We are not radical or violent. We are just stuck in the middle between extremist opposing views. The good news is that between anarchy (left) and tyranny (right) is democracy. Democracy requires that we come together and stop pointing to the small extreme minorities on either end of the political spectrum as excuses for not engaging in rational discourse. We need to embrace and save our democracy from Russian intervention. We do this by working together! Meet in the middle. We have more in common than we are led to believe in these divisive times. Let’s talk!
reilly m gray 