Holding Your Breath

CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM are the twin towers of American polarized hatred. Where once (1940-1980) Americans lived in a country with a very large middle class and a very large political center, in which conservatives and liberals shared a broad consensus underpinning their differences, we now inhabit a culture of a steadily shrinking middle class, now less than fifty percent of the population, in whcih American are either moving up or down, and are divided economically into rich and poor, and divided politically into extreme left and extreme right. This situation is more dangerous than one might think. It is a condition perfect for anger, hostility, and civil war, between the rich and the poor. Conservatism embraces tradition, and resists change, liberalism encourages change, and tends to want traditions to change. And ne'er the twain shall meet, or so it seems. In specific, tangible terms, conservatives tend to enbrace traditional religion, and liberals often prefer altermnatives, or are sometimes hostile to religion. Conservatives often don't believe in evolution; liberals nearly always do. Same with climate change. In America, capitalism is traditional, and socialism something of a necessary evil. If the middle class were to ever expand from its current forty nine percent of the American people back to where it used to be, say, seventy or eighty percent, you'd see a great increase in conciliatory points of view. But don't hold your breath.