How Did We Become So Polarized?

'June Cleaver' - an image now ridiculed by the left

America has never been more polarized than it is right now. At least during my own lifetime. I suppose the polarization in America was far greater prior to and during the Civil War than it is now. But I think it is relatively safe to say that, politically, the American people seem to be as polarized as they could possibly be.

That is why Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old MAGA Republican whose meteoric rise to fame and popularity made him a target. He was gunned down at a Utah Valley State University rally by an assassin’s bullet - a single shot to the neck. Law enforcement officials are saying there is no doubt this was a politically motivated, targeted shooting. (The latest information is that the assassin is now in  custody.)

The question is: how did it get to be this way? Why have we become so polarized that assassins are popping up on both sides of the political aisle to kill prominent people whose politics are the polar opposite of theirs?

Sadly, one of the things Kirk was trying to do was open up debate between the two sides. He was willing to listen to the other side and argue his own. That is what many of his rallies were all about,

That used to be the way disagreements were handled. People would disagree, discuss, and then go on their merry way. Often remaining the best of friends. I still operate this way. I am close friends with people whose views are the exact opposite of mine, and we get along quite nicely.

There is a lot of blame being placed on rhetoric from both sides. Rhetoric that vilifies people with opposing views. But I don’t think that’s the cause. I think it’s a symptom of something much deeper: the radical change in liberal values over the last few decades.

The differences between liberals and conservatives (in this sense I mean social conservatives) used to be relatively minor by today’s standards, so each side could tolerate the other without any real rancor. But as liberal values kept edging further into radical progressive territory that defines them today, most conservatives held their ground - since their values were based on biblical principles not subject to change.

So the gap kept widening to the point where people with conservative values could no longer tolerate the lengths to which people with liberal values had gone. Where in the past many values were shared, today that is far less the case. Progressive values  championed by the entertainment industry and promoted by the liberal media have taken hold and dominating the culture. Values that once were shared are now vilified.

The greatest impact of this phenomenon has been in the area of family values. Just a few short decades ago, ‘family’ meant a married couple with children.  The idea of having pre-marital sex  was considered immoral. (Even though it probably happened a lot more than people realized back then.) Today having sex before marriage is considered a good idea.

TV programs in the 50s had to abide by standards and practices consistent with cultural values of that time.

Women’s clothing were far more modestly designed back then. Even bathing suits were more modest. There was no such thing as a bikini. In the 50s one would be hard pressed to find a woman wearing pants in the street. Today, one can easily find women wearing any version of immodest clothing they choose in the street.

The definition of a man or woman was unchallenged. There was no such thing as ‘gender identity’. One was the sex with which they were born. Those who had gender dysphoria were believed to be a tiny minority to be pitied at best. The idea of gay marriage was completely unacceptable, even to liberals. A gay pride parade would never have happened in the 50s. They would have been arrested if they tried.

As recently as the Clinton era, gays in the military were accepted ONLY if they were not openly gay. That was the purpose of President Clinton’s ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. But today, the left considers that policy an infringement on the civil rights of gay people.

The idea of allowing biological men to use women’s bathrooms was once considered immoral even by liberals. Today they demand it!  Sex reassignment surgery was considered mutilation of the body. Today it is promoted as a solution for gender dysphoria.

Conservatives have not wavered in their opposition to many of these things. That is what I believe MAGA Republicans mean by “Make America Great Again.” They found that phrase, coined by candidate Trump during his first campaign, perfectly fit their worldview. They wanted to return to a time when more of their values were accepted by the mainstream—before those views were reshaped by powerful media and entertainment forces that now promote progressive values like gender identity politics.

During the last election, the mantra of the Democratic Party was “We won’t go back.” By that they meant America had “progressed” too far to return to the values once held by the majority—values the progressive elite see as intolerant and outdated. They were not going to go back to a time of rejection of gay and transgender people.

So now there is far more anger on both sides. The right thinks the left has gone down the path of the devil, and the left thinks the right is reverting to the bigoted policies of the past.

That could very well have been the motive behind the assassin who killed Charlie Kirk. He may have seen a man who was becoming increasingly successful in “turning back the clock” to the so-called dark ages of the 1950s. He may have believed he was doing a public service by stopping Kirk in his tracks—all for the sake of equality, maybe even “saving lives” that might otherwise be lost to suicide if society returned to a time when gay and transgender people were not seen as completely normal.

By the same token, the right wing fanatic who killed liberal Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband must have believed he was acting zealously for God.

The rhetoric on both sides surely contributes to the anger and frustration. But the root cause of the polarization, in my view, is the continual trek down the progressive road that has widened the break with values once shared with conservative counterparts. Trump and Sanders are only the voices articulating that break.

How this will all end, I don’t know. But this is the way things stand now as I see them—and why a leftist ideologue believed that murder was the quickest way to deal with the problem.