The problem in America is more subtle than that. While there is an unwillingness to "compromise", the bigger problem is that people are debating a conversation the other side isn't having.
In digging into their defenses, too often people are using "what about..." mentality. For example, if someone challenges Black Lives Matter, they very quickly resort to Blue Lives Matter.
Those are two entirely different conversations.
I don't believe anyone believes Blue lives don't matter; they are simply pointing out that there is a small percentage of cops indiscriminately violating the law and people's rights, with unarmed people dying in its wake.
The "well what about ..." mentality can be found in almost any national debate these days.
I've lived offshore for most of the last seventeen years. Friends at home in NYC tell me "you're not here, you don't see what's happening" in an attempt to devalue my opinions. I respond by telling them with distance comes clarity, and with such a wide view from that distance I might possibly see things clearer than those up close on the ground. Yeah, that never goes over well.
And while I've always ardently defended Americans to foreigners I encounter abroad, it is getting harder by the day to not breakdown and admit, yeah, Americans are that stupid. The moderates are vacating their seats and retreating to one corner or the other, leaving no one left to consider both sides and come up with the compromises to find real solutions.
So until Americans put their thinking caps back on, we'll remain "those stupid Americans" to the rest of the world -- to which I say, t"hey're not stupid, they're just ignorant."
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