It's normal for there to be a great deal of political hatred and conflict; cooperation and consensus is ABNORMAL in US history.
Really sort of odd in the last 10 years or so that people are suddenly getting their panties in a bunch over any sort of political conflict or disagreement at all.
Very true. The country was quite divided during the 60's and 70's on into the 80's. During the 90's it became clear that those divisions weren't going to tear the country apart. The Cold War ended. Markets had by and large vanquished socialism. And as the sixties generation grew older we became aware that the alternatives in the culture war weren't as stark as people thought in those days.
The "two cultures" of traditionalists and modernists were more mixed. Communities, families, and individuals were rarely all one or all the other. The poles of continuity and change and the tensions between them are found in all of us, and the resolution of such conflicts has to be worked out with intelligence, resourcefulness and resolution, not taken from some ideological recipe.
But we are an affluent society that uses all manner of media and supports all manner of activists. So it was almost inevitable that people would come to obsess about our divisions at a time when they were milder and more modest than they were in the past. Seen from one extreme or the other, it may look like we are on the verge of civil war, but seen from the middle it looks like we are muddling along as usual.
In ordinary times, our political system rewards politicians for appealing across social fault lines, and controversies in various areas -- social and cultural affairs, foreign policy, the economy -- don't all run in the same direction. As disputes in one of these areas become more venomous, those in the other areas are allowed to rest, if not to heal completely.
A democratic political order will always have political conflicts. Today, in contrast to the past, those conflicts are based more on religion, morality and social roles than on economics. There are dangers associated with such conflicts, but conflict won't go away. Our country has survived disagreements in the past and it's not likely to be ruined by them any time soon.
One of the glories of our country has been that we've avoided the "all or nothing" of European politics: either "throne and altar" absolute despotism or revolutionary dictatorship. Our politics have generally been mixed and moderate. We've always had room for faith and freedom, for a bedrock of principle and openness to changing popular sentiments.
It would be a mistake to lose that now and embrace the doctrine of irreconcilable and "irrepressible conflict." Those who do so have generally been losers if not dangers. Those who prevail have been those who were able to make their opinions look reasonable and natural to the broad spectrum of society, not those who wrang everything they could get out of stark polarities and bitter enmities.
I would argue that the divions today are in fact the deepest that they've been since the height of the Vietnam War in the late 60s, early 70s. The signs are there if you pay close enough attention; they manifest themselves in things like radical, underground organizations engaging in violent criminal activity (Earth Liberaltion Front, etc). This stuff is going on in increasing levels today, it just isn't getting a whole lot of coverage from the "mainstream press".
It's true that most of us are muddling along in our more or less happy lives, but I wouldn't take that as evidence that everything is fine.
I must have missed it. All I saw was a bunch of hippies and academics who started out protesting a dubious war, then decided protesting, generally, was kinda cool. After all, they were able to get on the tube 24/7 and be somebody. Other than that I disagree with just about everything else you posted :^)
Regards,
FGS