Insulting people who think differently from you isn’t the way to engage people

There were two items on BBC radio this morning which rather summed up the Corporation thinking about the State of the World. One was a brief but telling discussion on the Broadcasting House programme as to whether our political discussion now is getting to the point where we can’t actually air differences at all;  that, after Brexit and the Trump election, we are so utterly divided ideologically that common ground is impossible to find. It was an interesting conversation between Catherine Mayer, the co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party, and Iain Martin, who, while a Brexiteer, is also opposed to Trump.

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Fine, except that it was preceded by the secular Thought for the Day Sunday essay, A Point of View, by Adam Gopnik, an American who epitomised precisely the worldview of those who think that, post-Trump, the hour of darkness has arrived, that liberal, enlightenment values are under siege, that there comes a point in politics where the right minded have to take a stand at the barricades (I suppose social media is the equivalent): for instance, it might just about be ok to subcontract abortion policies to the states but absolutely unacceptable to jeopardise Roe v Wade.

Now, it’s fine for a commentator to comment: a Point of View is, as the name suggests, A Point of View.