I recently read an article I found quite disconcerting. The article is “The Left-Right Divide is Not Bridgeable” by Dennis Prager and appeared in townhall.com in February this year. I found the article in a braille magazine I read each week and have done so for 41 years, since it was first published. I am about to end my subscription, though, because there are too many articles like this one which I suspect was included in a false attempt to be “fair and balanced.”
Yesterday, jury selection began for Donald Trump’s trial for hush money he paid to a woman to cover up a liaison he had with her, to hide information from the American voters. The actual crime involves fudging campaign funds and records to potentially cover up the transaction. Even though this issue is not part of this article, it fits into that divide Prager describes. On the “right” side of the divide, without even understanding the law and the crime Trump is accused of, the folks are sure this is a “witch hunt” (they don’t know what that actually is either). On the “left” side of the divide, people have looked at evidence and are pretty sure Trump has committed several crimes to cover up a liaison with a porn star, to keep voters from knowing who he really is.
Throughout his article, Prager tries his best to tell readers there is no way for the right (which is clearly his darling) and the Left (the stupid naïve folks in his eyes) to meet and bridge their world view, or even be able to understand the other side’s thinking. He, then proves he can be as racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, as any of his right-side-of-the-divide’s readers.
The examples he gives of what can never be bridged include:
- Those who believe men can become women and women become men and those who can’t (as though this is a choice)
- - those who believe colorblindness is racist and those who see it as an antidote to racism (this one is strange because it seems only people on the right even use the term colorblindness – the rest of us know colorblindness is impossible at this time)
- - those who see Israel as the villain and Hamas as the victim (I don’t know anyone on the left who sees this as a complete divide, noting both Israel and Hamas are wrong)
- - those who believe children should be brought to drag shows and those who don’t (this one is also odd since most drag shows are not for children – although some drag performers do offer special programs specifically designed for children which are pure childhood entertainment)
- - those who believe reducing the number of police will reduce crime and those who want to increase the number of police to stop the growing crime rate (crime is going down significantly and the people who want fewer police want mental health workers to be called so someone with a “break” can be cared for by experts)
- - those who want to suppress “free speech” if they deem it hateful or misinformation and those who believe in “free speech” (free speech was not meant to say that people can say any hateful lying thing against someone and not potentially be held accountable for it – Is the writer trying to justify the appalling lies the right-of-the-dividers have spewed against anyone who does not see the world as they do?)
Prager tells readers that every one of the above positions is “mutually contradictory” and that there are plenty more such diverse positions. With no evidence, he claims that everyone who holds these positions agree that they are unbridgeable. Then he adds that only the “left liberals” are so naïve that they don’t agree. What! I thought he just said that everyone on both sides of the divide agree.
The comments on columns in the “New York Times” by folks on the left prove to Prager that his pathetic hypothesis has merit. He tells readers those who comment are college grads and have sufficient disposable income to subscribe to the NYT, which makes them what? His rant next moves to a column about Christian Nationalism by Ross Douthat, the one NYT columnist who supposedly properly defends conservative Christianity. Prager defines Christian Nationalism as “the left-wing smear of conservatives.” He says it is just like “sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, fascist, and threat to our democracy.” In Prager’s thinking it is the left who just use these to “smear” conservatives rather than debate with those with whom they differ. Huh!
It became clear to me just how that divide Mr. Prager whines about happened. He and his fellows on the conservative side have decided they can’t possibly be any of those things they say they are accused of, so either those things don’t exist or it is the “left” making them up to label decent god-loving people who.
- - claim they don’t despise LGBTQ+ people, particularly trans persons, while voting to deny medical care for young people in transition.
- - don’t despise women; they only want to force women to give birth and make them incubators for embryos and fetuses that have more rights than adult women have.
- - don’t despise immigrants; their own grandparents came from afar, but they want an impenetrable wall, sealing in all the “right people” and keeping those people out.
- - are not racist, but work really hard to take away voting rights for people who just happen to be Black, Hispanic, or another group they don’t care for despite the right to vote guaranteed in our Constitution. Then, there’s the history thing.
- - complain that people of color want police departments reformed but ignore the number of Black people killed by police because “I was afraid for my life.”
There is a divide, but not the one poor Mr. Prager is worried about and believes he is on the correct side of. The divide is separating those who have experience of the world and its diversity and those who have little or none. As part of that divide are “religious” people who select from the Bible the parts they like and ditch the rest. They seem to like the passages that prove to them, they are the ones god loves while despising the rest. Prager doesn’t realize that on both sides of the right-left divide are religious people who try to hold love and caring for others as a requirement of their faith.
That divide is not nearly as wide as people like Dennis Prager and his colleagues would like us all to believe. Broader education and more honest debate would help to build the bridges. It will take more than one bridge because the issues are many and varied and the bridges will need to vary too. The biggest block right now to any bridges being built are our media. For money, views, and likes, they will pump out all kinds of nonsense, much of it that can be harmful to their fellow citizens. They like the divide because it serves the purpose of keeping people on edge, suspicious of those they don’t understand. Suspicious, fearful people can be manipulated and alas, that is what conservatives with power have decided is their task and right now, they are doing it well along with their media collaborators.
Shame on Dennis Prager, picking a few comments supposedly by left-wing people as his evidence of a divide that he and his friends have done a great deal to create, then complaining about it and blaming it on those they have pushed across a chasm. This involves the right’s work to ban books they don’t like, dyssing curricula that teaches our history including the discrimination and violence against those not white and male, condemnation of drag shows which they probably have never even seen, denial of medical care to LGBTQ+ youth, to make them seem like criminals because they want to use bathrooms that match their gender.
The best way to get a bridge across the divide is for as many Americans as possible to vote Democratic in November. That could slow the fascist push by those who love the divide and want to make the gap larger. They don’t want people meeting in the center to talk, listen, and maybe even eat dinner together. We do have more in common than we think. It will take caring open-minds all along the divide to start the bridge-building process.
Perhaps it could start by having someone on the left invite Dennis Prager to a scary drag show, maybe even hold his hand so he isn’t too terrified.
