[The Urban Sombrero]

In your opinion, which side has moved more extremely over the past twenty years?I gotta say, to me it seems the left has. I'm 55 years old and can't remember socialism getting American voters as excited about a guy like Bernie Sanders. People screaming for free this or that. I can't remember a party brag about an economy when so many Americans were out of work or no longer looking for work. I can hear all kinds on the left actually saying we don't need handguns or saying "get a shotgun and shoot through the door when you feel threatened". I honestly have not heard anyone (in government) on the right say we should have any kind of weapon we choose, just that we should be able to have what we've had for decades.

I somewhat agree with your "barrage of extremism" argument but hell man, we're a country debating which bathroom penises should be peeing in. We're a country debating the chance of building extra bathrooms incase someone is questioning what their penis is for. We are a country where men are filing lawsuits to marry their laptop. We are a country that labels anyone against illegal immigration a racist. We've become a country where people that would like to vet incoming Muslims closer is a bigot, when safety is legitimate concern.

A lot of extreme things are happening right before our eyes. I'm sure you can list a few extreme things coming from the right but honestly most of it seems to be coming from the left. That's how I see it anyway.

I think extremists lead us to get bogged down in non-essentials. If Bruce Jenner comes to the conclusion he was supposed to have been a woman, the nation is not threatened. But while we are yelling at each other about who can pee where, our infrastructure continues to deteriorate, other nations are implementing high speed rail, etc. Extremism has yanked the process away from "roll up the sleeves" pragmatism into a world where symbolic acts of solidarity with the extremists matter more than solving problems via the art of politics.