You are for the record more lucid and rational about your arguments than most of the ones I get on this site. The last time I tried to write something like this (in which I modestly expressed support FOR ANOTHER PERSONS COLUMN for tolerance on empathy for Republicans and Trump voters) I received some of the msot vituperative and bigoted hate mail from people saying things along the lines in favor of F-Trumpers. In other articles where I've tried to suggest that historical some people's ideas on history are flawed, they've basically told me to go to hell.

I am a Democrat and I favor progressive ideals. The problem is, as someone who somehow found himself subscribed to progressive newsletters and Democratic fundraiser, I keep running into articles which among other things try to rewrite the history of the Democratic Party as if it didn't exist before 1970, the idea that every Republican other than Lincoln was a monster and unworthy of respect, that Fox News should be banned, that conservatives should not be allowed on mainstream media in any form, that it is the media's job to spend every minute of every day telling us that all Republicans are evil incarnate and at the same time if they do so they aren't telling us something progressives already know, that certain states in the Union are beyond saving at this point (most in the Deep South) and that Disney, which has one of the most horrible corporate and racial histories of all, is somehow a progressive hero because it makes Fox News' head explode. I'd keep going but I think you get the point.

I believe in a functioning democracy and I do agree that the Republican Party has become a shitshow. I didn't go into greater detail on this because at this point I'm tired of hearing the same story. But I also know that the answer to saving America can't be just having the Democrats keep winning elections over and over until the Republicans regain their sanity. That's basically happened in the last three consecutive elections and each one seems to convince them to keep becoming more extreme. I don't know what the answer is. There may not be one. What I do know is that some of the attitudes I talk about in the final paragraph are real and frankly do frighten me because so much of the rhetoric is vituperative not only to Republicans but basically any Democrat. I didn't include this in my article but when Jaypal led a compromise to vote for the Infrastructure bill, there was some pretty loud vituperation for her by leftists on this column. They believed, sincerely, that my trying to move forward for this counrty - Jaypal had sold out.

This column is an argument for compromise , biparisanship and moderation. I realize that seems to be last century but I sincerely believe if this country is to have even the slightest hope of moving forward, it has to come from there.

And I also don't agree with almost everything Bill Maher says. But he' is a Democrat. He's just NOT a progressive. I realize there are some progressives who believe that you can not be one without the other. Maher's politics are flawed - I've written a lot about that too - but that doesn't make him the equivalent of Greg Gutfield. But I keep getting leftist newsletters equating him as such. That is not the kind of talk that leads towards compromise. It doens't bother me nearly as much as everything you hear from the talking heads on Newsmax. But I can't pretend it doesn't concern me quite a bit. Someone on this blog once wrote that democracy HAS to be purple. If we get to the point where Red and blue are completely separate, then we have failed.