Am I Blue?
The election campaign made it official. These are the Disunited States. There is "red America": conservative, Republican, religious. And there is "blue America": liberal, Democratic, secular. Everybody's message from the election results is that red America won, and blue America must change or die.
It's a terrible exaggeration, of course. People have different mixes of values, and states have different mixes of people. More than 50 million, or 44%, of the 115 million citizens who voted for either George W. Bush or John F. Kerry on Tuesday live in states that went for the other guy. These misfits go out in public, mingle with others and often are treated like normal human beings. (For the half-million that voted for Ralph Nader, it may be a different story.)
A moment of surprising resonance in the campaign was Jon Stewart's Oct. 15 appearance on "Crossfire." Taking just a tad too seriously his recent appointment by acclamation as the Walter Cronkite of our time, Stewart begged the show's hosts to "stop hurting America" with their divisiveness. I used to work on that show, and I still think the robust, even raucous, and ideologically undisguised hammering of politicians on "Crossfire" is more intellectually honest than more decorous shows where journalists either pretend neutrality or pontificate as if somebody had voted them into office.
Still, recognizing that the mood has changed since 9/11, I have been erratically and unsuccessfully pitching a different approach. CNN is not interested. Nor are the other news networks. If anyone reading this wants it, it's yours. Free. The idea, in a word, "Cease-Fire." You get your politicians or your experts or your interest-group representatives, and instead of poking them with a stick to widen their disagreement, you nudge and bully and cajole them toward some kind of common ground. It sounds goody-goody, I know, but the intention would be more Judge Judy than Bill Moyers.
At the moment, though, one side of the great divide is being called on for something closer to abjection than mere reconciliation.
So yes, OK, fine. I'm a terrible person -- barely a person at all, really, and certainly not a real American -- because I voted for the losing candidate on Tuesday. If you insist -- and you do -- I will rethink my fundamental beliefs from scratch because they are shared by only 47% of the electorate.
