Where Have All the Moderates Gone?

The nice thing about deciding to do a political blog is that there is no shortage of material to write about! This week especially, it seemed like the news stories about bad behavior on both the far right and the far left were never ending. There was the Sarah Palin controversy about her use of rifle crosshairs over districts that Republicans were targeting to take back from Democrats this year. On a related note, she recently criticized Obama for not putting tougher sanctions on Iran, stating that doing so will allow them to develop nuclear weapons and cause a "Second Holocaust." I find it hard to take foreign policy advice from a woman whose previous foreign policy experience was limited to, as she so famously stated, being able to see Russia from her backyard. I often wonder how anyone can possibly take this woman as a serious political figure...but I'll refrain from saying much more, given my self-imposed rules of refraining from angry name-calling on this blog.

I digress. Aside from the Sarah Palin controversy, there were also acts and threats of violence committed against members of Congress in both parties after the signing of the healthcare bill, Karl Rove getting heckled for being a "war criminal" at a book signing, Tea Party participants harassing a homeless person by loudly shouting he was in the wrong place if he was looking for a handout, domestic terrorists being arrested... and probably a lot more of disturbing, extreme political behavior.

It's unfortunate, but there's obviously a big divide in our country. You can see this in any recent poll - America has been split basically 50/50 on every major controversial issue of the past few years, whether it's the healthcare, the wars, or the economy. What's even more unfortunate is that it's only the far sides of the political spectrum that are getting the attention. Both liberal and conservative politicians seem to be moving farther left or right as well, only making the situation worse. I was listening to a local early morning radio show the other day, when the obviously liberal hosts were bashing the tea party movement. From what they said the movement is really about fear of change, fear of having a black President, fear of having a Latina on the Supreme Court, etc.. In other words it's just a bunch of rich, racist white people complaining about change. I could not believe what I was hearing! Then on the conservative side, I don't know how many times I've heard people ignorantly accuse Obama of being a communist, a Muslim spy, or even an illegal alien.

It's all ridiculous! It's this kind of thinking that causes people to resort to bad behavior and violence. If people would just get educated on the issues and learn to communicate about their ideological differences, maybe our country wouldn't be so divided. Have we forgotten what the 'U' in USA stands for? I only hope that the next President can do a much better job of unifying this country, because we sorely need it!