PJ Media

This post confirms my theory that politics are entirely tribal — and that Dr. Helen is remarkably lacking in any kind of real introspection. I’ve been a blog reader since the very beginning of the format (one of the first Instapundit readers, Kaus, Josh Marshall, Sullivan, etc.) and as this new media developed I’ve been fascinated by the complete failure of everyone — on each side of the divide — to understand their opponents on even a fairly superficial level. Everything about our opponents becomes a cartoon: the left are Stalinists who don’t view conservatives as legitmate; the right are know-nothings who think that liberals are PC-laden fools. Obviously, the truth is that both the left and right feel empathy, and have good ideas from time to time, but view different problems facing the world as paramount. Neither side is willing to recognize that the other side ever has a legitimate point, but instead view everything as confirmation of their worst opinions about their opponents. The Bush/Obama situation is instructive. Both administrations did good things and dumb things. In fact, that’s the case about every administration — even the best ones. But try to get a conservative to say something nice about Obama, or a liberal to say something nice about Bush. My conservative friends are apoplectic about Obama (over a moderate health care bill almost identical to Mitt Romney’s in MA), just as my liberal friends were apoplectic about Bush (over foreign policy no different from Bill Clinton’s). In both cases the attitude is undeserved. Running a country like this is difficult, and we would all be better served by calming the hell down.