Part of the problem is that both left and right are constantly seeking self affirming data bites and spinning them beyond reasonable inference to win another point in the political game. And it is self re-inforcing, the more the otherside spins the more one ignores even the useful bits that may underlie their spin and the more you ratched up your own echo chamber. This has been going on for all of human history I suspect, but it does have peaks and valleys - the last 20 years have be working up to this peak.
A few examples:
I heard at least 5 different major network commentators refer to last night as an "armed insurrection by domestic terrorists". This is simply not accurate and not helpful. What they did was unlawful, unruly, dangerous and offensive, I would be the first to jail every person who entered the capitol unlawfully yesterday without losing a minute of sleep. But there is simply no evidence of signficant firearm use by the protestors, there is no evidence any of them intended to in fact install their own government while at the capitol and there is no evidence that they were terrorists by any reasonable definition of that term. This rhetoric does not help some on the right who have enabled Trump to see the harm in his hyperbole and divisiveness, it just confirms to them the media cannot be trusted to deliver them the news. We need to do better than this.
Similarly, I heard more than a few congress members and pundits say all 60 Trump legal suits have been throughly vetted by judges (including Trump appointees) and fully repudiated. This is only partially true - some have been factually vetted by a court - but most were summarily dismissed on procedural grounds without any actual hearing on the mertis. And this is absolutely the way the law does and should work - concepts like standing etc are important part of a functioning legal system. So why not say, "most of Trumps law suits have been dismissed on procedural grounds but those that have proceeded have failed on the merits"? What about admitting that while Biden is our lawful and legitimate president elect, that some of the poll workers and sec of states played fast and loose around the edges and that those states should spend the next 2 years improving their rules and systems, as Florida did after 2000. And on the turn, Trump is obsolutely wrong by any definition when he repeatedly says he "won a beatiful and historic landslide victory". Even if every one of the 60 lawsuits would have prevailed he would have barely ecked out a win. So how about we start speaking the fully nuanced truth instead of grand hyperbole. We need to do better than this.
So, as a life long conservative I state my respect for those Americans who peacefully protested this summer and yesterday, while also stating my complete disgust for those that destroyed public/private property, used violence and caused harm to others. But I also acknowledge, that in both instances, when long standing concerns are not given full due consideration (which is different than just giving them their way) at some point the most radical 2% agitators have fertile ground to sow chaos. And yes, black Americans have legitimate longstanding concerns about grave injustices that get routinely dismissed by half of our society; and yes, poor white Americans have suffered greatly at the hands of the de-industrialization of the country, and all have suffered as we remap the "nuclear family" as a primary feature of society and lose historical grounding points such as faith; and yes, I can see how the two-faced politicians on both sides of the aisle have earned the hate from the other side.
We need to start hearing one another. Much like humor - there are nuggets of truth behind even the most non-sensical positions. Rather than labelling those we disagree with as racists, communists, traitors, fools, etc., why don't we try to find out what grain of sand has been in their shoe for so long that it has come to this. Because we are better than this. We must to better than this.
