Lughnasa                                                            Labor Day Moon

Read an article today that wondered if we might be coming to a four party moment in American political history. The far right tea party and their running dogs, what’s left of the Republican party that’s center-right, the center-left politics of Hillary and mainstream democrats and the leftist politics of Bernie Sanders and his followers. This could be true and may well reflect the deepening among political factions.

In itself I find nothing amazing about this. Two party politics has produced two centrist groups both organized around protecting corporate America. Each has slightly different inflections, pro-defense spending on the right and pro-social programs like Social Security and Medicare on the left, but in their design to retain status quo economics both look and act much the same. Neither will either one get too far into the so-called values voter mess, preferring to avoid such topics as gay marriage, abortion, fringe positions on patriotism and the widening inequities in our economy. In these matters they have taken safe positions, neither too for nor too against, and hope they’re cover won’t be blown.

What I find troubling here is that we may be coming to a point where factions no longer speak to or with one another, but past one another. Recall how many times you’ve seen an article or heard a remark about an opposing point of view from your own and dismissed it. Not thoughtfully analyzed it, but dismissed it altogether. If I see a remark about the sanctity of the family, Benghazi or Muhammad Obama, my mind glazes over with thin ice and I go on to something else.

And here’s where I want to say a good word for Facebook. Many of my high school classmates, perhaps some of yours, have grown into a partisan place among one of the four factions. I know I have. Family members, too, and some odd folks that get inserted along the way who knows how also populate other factions than my own. In this way I see posts about leaving the country if you burn the flag, the glories of Donald Trump, the essential fact of Hillary’s candidacy, even the occasional call for fiscal responsibility.

My first, second and third reaction to these posts was OMG. What are these people thinking? Or, are they thinking? In other words I was dismissive. That thin ice covered my attention and I slid on to different material.

More recently though I’ve had another take on it all. I have known Larry Cummings, Jim Oliver, Mike Thomas, Connie Cummins since they were kids. When they and others post things that makes the ice begin to crystallize over my attention, I have to wonder, can I dismiss persons I know so well? Granted we’ve grown into adults with different lifeways and probably started with different assumptions based on our families of origin, but are they no longer to be heard?

Struggling with this, knowing I still disagreed with what they believe, I still cared about them, still found their lives and their journeys interesting, worth keeping up on. I could have this realization because I knew each of them from elementary school, some even before that. So, I began to wonder, are the tea party folks whom I don’t know really any different from Larry, Jim, Connie and Mike? Of course not.

What I’m getting at here is that in spite of our differences in political orientation, we are still citizens of the same country, folks on the same journey in this life, part of the broader human family. I may disagree with them, wonder how anyone could buy that point of view, but they are still folks I know and want to continue to know. Might be I’m trying for the political equivalent of Martin Luther, something like disagree with the belief, but love the believer.

In doing that I imagine a world where not only can we respect our differences, but seek hard for our common ground. Knowing these folks, I’m sure family is important to them and so are the communities in which they now find themselves living. Me, too. Perhaps that’s where we can start to hunt for coalition building. Or, another example, I’m sure these folks want clean lakes in which to fish and healthy forests in which to hunt. Good schools for their children and economic opportunities for them as they grow. They probably want a financially and medically secure old age for themselves, too. We need to talk to each other, walk on each other’s thin ice until one of us breaks through.