To the editor: As alluded to in staff writer Kevin Rector’s article (“A new era of American political violence is upon us. How did we get here? How does it end?,” Sept. 11), the late 1960s and early 1970s were also a time of political violence and polarization. You can hear it expressed in the music of that era, such as Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 classic “For What It’s Worth”:
There’s battle lines being drawn
And nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Are gettin’ so much resistance from behind
The time is ripe for the youth of our country to de-demonize those whom they don’t understand and seek common ground rather than exacerbating and intensifying current disputes. We all have a country to save.
Jonathan Kaunitz, Santa Monica
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To the editor: Science has shown that until we reach the “age of reason,” between ages 7 and 11, we humans largely think in binary terms; yes/no, up/down, on/off, good/bad. Around the period of ages 10 to 12, we become more capable of analog thought, analogous to a dimmer switch with many choices between just on or off, outgrowing the earlier binary mode. Unfortunately, technology and politics are perpetuating and intensifying binary thought processes. It is so much easier, and infinitely more primitive, to simply cast everything in binary terms: “You are with us or against us.” “My way or the highway.”
Politicians take advantage of this easiest means of thought by dividing issues into “us versus them.” Extremists at either end of the right/left spectrum operate in exactly the same way. Analog thought, however, examines both sides of an issue and seeks compromise between extremes.
But it requires the hard work of thinking through issues. Binary thinking is so much easier. One can just default to one extreme or the other. We encounter this in the current president’s constant rhetoric about others being the “enemy.”
The real enemy is within us in the form of our earliest childhood binary thinking. If our society, and for that matter, our civilization, is to survive, we must engage in mature, analog thinking; finding solutions to our problems by recognizing the pros and cons of every position and arriving at the best possible answers that don’t demonize or idealize others. Beware the binary.
Sheldon Kardener, Santa Monica
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To the editor: I would like to add one comment to the issues raised in this article. It is up to the top leaders in our country, specifically President Trump and his administration, to call for both sides of the political spectrum (not just the “lunatic” left) to move away from their extremist positions and find a way to reach compromises on the major issues we are facing today: immigration, abortion, gun rights, LGBTQ+ rights, etc. I believe that a strong, sincere plea in this direction from Trump and other high government officials on both sides would be an important first step in toning down the inflaming rhetoric and behavior that now exist. I don’t, however, have much hope that this will happen.
Lewis Rosenthal, Los Angeles
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To the editor: No one on the left or right would doubt the country is split, perhaps 45:45 in ideology. Funny then, isn’t it, that according to this article (“From Charlie Kirk to Supreme Court backlash, Civil War historians see modern parallels,” Sept. 13), with President Trump in office there are pre-Civil War “echoes”? So many of us on the right disagreed with virtually everything the Biden administration did. Where were the pre-Civil War echoes then?
Ken Artingstall, Glendale
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To the editor: Sometimes poetic words hide poison. Contributing writer Josh Hammer says Charlie Kirk was “the quintessential public square warrior” (“In Charlie Kirk, the nation has lost a singular voice,” Sept. 11). We do not need public square warriors. They inflame matters rather than improve them. We need public square compromisers. Compromise is the best medicine for this country. It offers the only cure. There is no other.
James Rodriguez, San Bernardino
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To the editor: Responsible columnists are supposed to offer opinions based on a totality of facts. In Hammer’s list of attempted assassinations that he had hoped would pull us back from the “brink of political violence,” he omitted the assassination of a Democratic Minnesota legislator and her husband, the attempted assassinations of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and a U.S. representative from Arizona and, as Hammer would say, “too many other examples to count.”
Cherry-picking violent attacks by selecting only those committed against fellow conservatives serves to demonize the opposition, potentially leading to what Hammer writes that he wants to avoid: a resort to political violence.
Valerie Lezin, Los Angeles
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To the editor: I was a teenager in the ‘50s when the unwritten rule was “never talk about politics or religion” (“The killing of Charlie Kirk undermines the basis of our democracy,” Sept. 11). Possibly that “rule” was a result of McCarthyism, I don’t know, but it was pretty strongly enforced socially. This resulted in a bland, superficial, boring culture that my friends and I hungered to escape.
We rebelled by listening to what would’ve been referred to at the time as “Black music”: jazz and then folk music. We sought books that showed us different perspectives and ideas. We looked for movies from places like Sweden and Japan. Anything that would help us escape from the deadening, conforming white bread culture we felt trapped in, we explored. Finally Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and a retinue of young people like us helped us define what we were rebelling about.
I wonder if our only escape in this dangerously polarized era is to go back to the “don’t talk about politics or religion” rule? I hope not.
Carole Lutness, Valencia