Division vs. Polarization

The Morning Show is a blog companion to the podcast audio

  Good morning, and happy Tuesday!  If you stop by to visit, you'll immediately notice that I've gone overboard with the vinyl record collection.  Wait a few minutes, and at the top of the hour, your eyes might widen a bit at the menagerie of sounds of the assorted clocks.  And now there's the newspapers.  I should probably cancel a subscription, but I am having a blast!  There's paper EVERYWHERE.  And it's really not that  bad - just a daily subscription to the Wall Street Journal, and a Sunday Washington Post.  It's been illuminating to read the two simultaneously, and to try to extract my own conclusions from the rustling print. It's also a bit frustrating. Here's a thought for today:  Are differences a problem, and if so, how are they best solved?

  Case in point...The right headline on the Sunday post stated Trump's approval rating takes hit.  Examining the story further, there's a graph outlining the percent who approve of the way Trump is handling his job.  Between April and now, the percentage has dropped from 13% to 11% among democrats, 38% to 32% among independents, and 84% to 82% among republicans....with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. This is from the Washington Post-ABC News poll July 10-13, among 1,001 adults.  So.....yeah...Not exactly a shocker.

  At first glance, I was struck by the polarization of views.  82% to 11% is a pretty big gap.  But thinking further, is this a bad thing?  If you poll the people who like the Orioles vs the Yankees, you're going to get numbers like this.  And back to governance, complicated problems require many ideas.  But - when we believe that the people who entertain opposing ideas are divided from us, are the enemy...I'd assert that's a bad thing.  Generalizing schools of thought, globbing ideas together and then making it into a pinata...MAN it's bumming me out!  I find it not only intellectually lazy, self-righteous, and annoying, but also harmful.  And, it makes a lot more work for the rest of us, trying to figure out where we stand in the world, sorting through the hysteria at the Post or the wasteland of empathy that is the Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

  I'd suspect that those polling numbers would be different if we listened to each other a bit more.  At least, mine have been, and I've been learning a lot from you all.

  SO, what to do?  I don't know...But I'm thinking that, for me, the poll numbers tell me more than ever it's important to have friends from all sides.  I want to be a part of a crew that is a pollster's nightmare, making squiggly lines.  I don't want to try to reach a consensus -  that would destroy many worthy schools of thought.  But I want everyone to be welcome at my table, and boy we'd have some good discussions, and hopefully few agreements.  So, let's start today!  The polarization can be eased with a return to civility, restoring ideas to the ideas shelf, and realizing that it's our fellow citizens that think them. But BOO YANKEES!