on political divisiveness, part II

you gotta hand it to trump.  until 2016, the engagement of most citizens in political conversation was quite a bit less than it is today.  and in a way, that's a good thing.  we should always stay engaged, learning, exchanging ideas.  it's just that most of us put more energy and time into our work, our families, our friends, our pastimes, and previously perhaps deferred politics to the elected officials that we put in office, specifically so that they could represent us.

but it seems to me, the polarizing affect trump has had on america in general, and each of us in particular, while good for getting us engaged, has been bad if we value unity as a people.  i mean, we're always going to have parties in opposition, differing viewpoints, and that's healthy.  the world has too many bad examples of what happens when one party or one ideology holds singular power for too long.  in a way, america benefits when the democrats and republicans, hold each other in check, to help defend against extremism, and hopefully end up in situation where most of what gets done are things that are agreeable to both sides.

in a more perfect world, we deal with opposing ideas but first starting the conversation finding and laying out the common ground, and then discussing and debating differences from there.  but lately (if ever?) that isn't how it works. when we disagree, we tend to start talking about the aspects of the issue that are the most opposite.

examples: 

1) when talking about abortion, rather than starting from the common ground of where life comes from and why the health of everyone involved is important, and going from there, we tend to start with the ideas of "i should have the freedom to do what i want, unpressured by government", versus "all life must be preserved and protected by government in spite of what those involved want or decide to do". 

2) when talking about immigration, rather than starting from the common ground that we want our immigration policy to best fit the social and economic needs of our country and its healthy growth, we tend to start with "illegals are breaking the law and must be kicked out, and a big wall for keeping them and everyone else out", versus "we should let anyone in who wants to live free".