To the editor: As alluded to in workers author Kevin Rector’s article (“A brand new period of American political violence is upon us. How did we get right here? How does it finish?,” Sept. 11), the late Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies have been additionally a time of political violence and polarization. You possibly can hear it expressed within the music of that period, corresponding to Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 traditional “For What It’s Price”:
There’s battle strains being drawn
And no one’s proper if everyone’s improper
Younger individuals talking their minds
Are gettin’ a lot resistance from behind
The time is ripe for the youth of our nation to de-demonize these whom they don’t perceive and search frequent floor relatively than exacerbating and intensifying present disputes. All of us have a rustic to save lots of.
Jonathan Kaunitz, Santa Monica
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To the editor: Science has proven that till we attain the “age of motive,” between ages 7 and 11, we people largely assume in binary phrases; sure/no, up/down, on/off, good/unhealthy. Across the interval of ages 10 to 12, we grow to be extra able to analog thought, analogous to a dimmer change with many decisions between simply on or off, outgrowing the sooner binary mode. Sadly, know-how and politics are perpetuating and intensifying binary thought processes. It’s so a lot simpler, and infinitely extra primitive, to easily forged all the pieces in binary phrases: “You’re with us or towards us.” “My manner or the freeway.”
Politicians reap the benefits of this best technique of thought by dividing points into “us versus them.” Extremists at both finish of the proper/left spectrum function in precisely the identical manner. Analog thought, nonetheless, examines either side of a problem and seeks compromise between extremes.
However it requires the arduous work of pondering via points. Binary pondering is a lot simpler. One can simply default to 1 excessive or the opposite. We encounter this within the present president’s fixed rhetoric about others being the “enemy.”
The actual enemy is inside us within the type of our earliest childhood binary pondering. If our society, and for that matter, our civilization, is to outlive, we should have interaction in mature, analog pondering; discovering options to our issues by recognizing the professionals and cons of each place and arriving at the absolute best solutions that don’t demonize or idealize others. Beware the binary.
Sheldon Kardener, Santa Monica
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To the editor: I want to add one remark to the problems raised on this article. It’s as much as the highest leaders in our nation, particularly President Trump and his administration, to name for either side of the political spectrum (not simply the “lunatic” left) to maneuver away from their extremist positions and discover a option to attain compromises on the most important points we face in the present day: immigration, abortion, gun rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and so forth. I imagine {that a} sturdy, honest plea on this route from Trump and different excessive authorities officers on either side can be an essential first step in firming down the inflaming rhetoric and conduct that now exist. I don’t, nonetheless, have a lot hope that this may occur.
Lewis Rosenthal, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Nobody on the left or proper would doubt the nation is break up, maybe 45:45 in ideology. Humorous then, isn’t it, that in line with this text (“From Charlie Kirk to Supreme Courtroom backlash, Civil Battle historians see fashionable parallels,” Sept. 13), with President Trump in workplace there are pre-Civil Battle “echoes”? So many people on the proper disagreed with just about all the pieces the Biden administration did. The place have been the pre-Civil Battle echoes then?
Ken Artingstall, Glendale
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To the editor: Typically poetic phrases cover poison. Contributing author Josh Hammer says Charlie Kirk was “the quintessential public sq. warrior” (“In Charlie Kirk, the nation has misplaced a singular voice,” Sept. 11). We don’t want public sq. warriors. They inflame issues relatively than enhance them. We’d like public sq. compromisers. Compromise is the perfect drugs for this nation. It presents the one remedy. There isn’t a different.
James Rodriguez, San Bernardino
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To the editor: Accountable columnists are supposed to supply opinions based mostly on a totality of info. In Hammer’s checklist of tried assassinations that he had hoped would pull us again from the “brink of political violence,” he omitted the assassination of a Democratic Minnesota legislator and her husband, the tried assassinations of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and a U.S. consultant from Arizona and, as Hammer would say, “too many different examples to rely.”
Cherry-picking violent assaults by choosing solely these dedicated towards fellow conservatives serves to demonize the opposition, probably resulting in what Hammer writes that he desires to keep away from: a resort to political violence.
Valerie Lezin, Los Angeles
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To the editor: I used to be an adolescent within the ‘50s when the unwritten rule was “by no means discuss politics or faith” (“The killing of Charlie Kirk undermines the premise of our democracy,” Sept. 11). Probably that “rule” was a results of McCarthyism, I don’t know, however it was fairly strongly enforced socially. This resulted in a bland, superficial, boring tradition that my associates and I hungered to flee.
We rebelled by listening to what would’ve been referred to on the time as “Black music”: jazz after which people music. We sought books that confirmed us completely different views and concepts. We seemed for motion pictures from locations like Sweden and Japan. Something that might assist us escape from the deadening, conforming white bread tradition we felt trapped in, we explored. Lastly Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and a retinue of younger individuals like us helped us outline what we have been rebelling about.
I ponder if our solely escape on this dangerously polarized period is to return to the “don’t discuss politics or faith” rule? I hope not.
Carole Lutness, Valencia
