Are the issue dividing left and right more severe than those in the 60s around the time of Vietnam? Maybe.Yes.
Someone has not been paying attention.
This is not simple disagreement. This is in your face by-any-means defiance of orderly reasoned debate: Florida, the threats in California, the control by other means violent demonstrations, arson, explosives in backpacks, the usual historic tools of the clueless-turned activist.
It is the precursor of a shooting war.
When two things have happened, the success of anti-firearms and the defining of self-defense as a crime worse than the criminal's (as in England, Canada), I expect the beginnings of the shooting war.
One of the examples produced hourly around the clock in one form or another is the Reagan mini-series. "Grumbling Trickles Down From Reagan Biopic," by Jim Rutenberg, New York Times, talks about the "biopic."
Mr. Rutenberg and the people involved in making the Reagan mini-series have a mission. "It is about telling a good story in our honest sort of way. We all believe it's a story that should be told."
And why is their "honest sort of way" likely to be criticized? Because of the "ugly specter of patriotism."
"If this film can help create a bit more questioning in the public about the direction America has been going in since the 1970's, I guess then I think it will be doing a service." Helping stamp out that "ugly specter of patriotism?"
The makers of the miniseries are going to save us from that "ugly specter of patriotism." You see, they hope that "the film would prompt Americans to be more suspect of their leaders." But not just any leaders, of course. Only those that promote that "ugly specter of patriotism."
BTW, questioning "the direction America has been going in since the 1970's" is extremely interesting. Those were the times that moved the "center" of political spectrum far to the left. Perhaps the speaker meant since the late 1980s. That's when the free press was re-established and the "ugly specter of patriotism" began to re-emerge.