I think I’ve noted several times over the last handful of months that I was spent on the landfill that our public political discourse has become.  The partisanship has gotten to a point where it sounds like grade school kids calling each other names on the playground, which we all know accomplishes absolutely nothing.

This article probably sums up what I’ve been thinking and feeling, but haven’t been articulate enough to express in a way that would make sense.  Usually, when I link to opinion pieces I try to give a little bit of a disclaimer on the author and their partisan leanings.  I did a quick look, but couldn’t figure out what John Avalon’s leanings are or what the deal with the Daily Beast is.  Read the article and see if it hits home.

I pulled two paragraphs from the article, which  are actually direct quotes from Obama’s speech that I think say it all very concisely.

“We can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question somebody’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like ‘socialists’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover’ and ‘fascist’ and ‘right-wing nut’ — that may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian, even murderous regimes.

“Now, we’ve seen this kind of politics in the past. It’s been practiced by both fringes of the ideological spectrum, by the left and the right, since our nation’s birth. But it’s starting to creep into the center of our discourse. … The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. … It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate, the one we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.”