New Group Aims To Heal Divide With Dialogue

The 2020 campaign for president starts in earnest with the Iowa Caucus next week. There can be little doubt that this campaign will be one of the most bitter and divisive elections in American history. To find a historical analog to current polarization, experts point to the election of 1860 when issues of slavery and state’s rights led to civil war. 

There are sharp divisions not only around President Trump and the actions taken by his administration but on virtually every issue, from health care to immigration to climate change. Beyond the political issues, long-simmering feuds over values and norms have fractured institutions of social cohesion fueling an increasingly heated culture war.

For me and many others, the question is how did we get to this point and why?

Recently, FRONTLINE, the Emmy-award winning current affairs program from PBS, focused on the issue of political polarization with a substantive four-hour documentary, America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump.  The film is available for streaming in its entirety on the PBS FRONTLINE website. 

The documentary spans the past twelve years, reviewing the events and issues that have led to the bitter and toxic politics of today with interviews featuring politicians, journalists, political strategists and pundits across the political spectrum including former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, Breitbart publisher and Trump campaign CEO Steve Banon, right-wing author Ann Coulter, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, New York Times journalist Peter Baker, former WTMJ talk show host Charlie Sykes and many others.

Although the film is excellent, it’s tough to watch because it portends a political future more divisive than the present. At the end of the film, I found myself asking “Can anything be done to heal the divisions between Left and Right?” “Can our Constitution, created to “insure domestic Tranquility” and “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” survive an era of toxic politics that threatens to get even more corrosive?”

I’ve come to the conclusion that no election, no politician, and no set of policies is going to fix what’s been broken - a civic trust born of mutual understanding, interest, and respect. As the film shows, media and technology have exacerbated the divide, allowing us to retreat into echo chambers that ossify opinions. We are not hearing the other side and we don’t want to.

I believe that the healing of civic trust needs to start in our communities and can be catalyzed with face-to-face, deliberate and good faith dialog between those of opposing views. This is the idea behind the new organization Mount Horeb Community Forums.   

Join fellow community members on February 22, from noon until 2 pm for a moderated discussion of the film America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump. This community forum is free and open to the public. Anyone interested in good-faith discussions of the state of our politics -- Democrats, Republicans, Pro-Trump, Anti-Trump, undecided -- is invited and encouraged to attend.

Please note: the film will not be screened at this event. Please stream the film from the FRONTLINE website and come to the forum with your thoughts, questions, and ideas.

For more information visit mount-horeb-community-forums.webnode.com.