Which is exactly what you were doing in the message I was responding too. But you are correct in that we must look to the future and co-operate. I am not hopeful at all that the Trumpist wing of the GOP can do that.
I'm not sure that the most vocal fringes of either party are even remotely interested in healing divides.
From the silly fringes of the Republican party who think "making liberals cry" is a good reason to vote for Trump to the silly fringes of the Democrat party who think that a reduced majority in Congress and wafer-thin control of the Senate is some kind of overwhelming mandate for a full-on progressive agenda, there are certainly reasonable numbers on both sides who seem to think it's their job to impose their world views on everyone. Which leads me, time and again, to the conclusion the best government we can possibly have is a small government that can't do some of the more silly things the fringes of both sides might like to do.
What we have now, as mentioned above, is the kind of silly games of endless tit-for-tat and "but they did it first" arguments that just push ever-further into a situation where each party tries to prevent the other party from achieving anything while consolidating their own power, and both sides have lost any right to complain about the other side being underhanded. Requirements for bipartisan approval for certain key appointments make sense but when both sides become more interested in obstructing the other than in actually getting anything done it's easy to see why they start to fall by the wayside. And as they do so the party in power has ever-fewer checks on what they can do.
As hedrick said a few posts back, there needs to be a real sense that people in more rural communities are being listened to and taken seriously. Having lived in very rural areas and in big cities the huge differences in lifestyles are very apparent. Things that work in very urban areas (where many of the more vocal liberals hail from) simply don't work in the country. Country living is much more self-sufficient, by its very nature because people are more spread out and provision of central services just doesn't work as well. That makes it easy to see why country dwellers start to resent city dwellers - to give just one example I see cities with publicly funded fire companies while my local fire company is run by volunteers and local donations. In other words my taxes fund someone else's fire protection but if I want fire protection I have to pay again to keep the local fire company operating.
When I'm out walking/hiking I typically carry a weapon of some kind. My primary concern isn't aggressive humans, more the potential to encounter an aggressive dog/bear/rabid raccoon or similar. Of course if I were to encounter an aggressive human the weapon would be equally effective against them. I really don't care to be told by some urbanite that I don't need a weapon because I can call the police. Firstly, I can't call the police if there's no cellphone service and in any event when the nearest police station is a 45 minute drive away it's hard to see a police response to an emergency situation being very useful. Where I lived in the city the police station was a 5 minute walk away, which changes the dynamic completely. Likewise, when I'm hiking in the woods I carry things like a folding saw so I can clear fallen branches if I need to. That saw could be used to cause horrendous injuries, if used as a weapon. Prohibiting the carrying of a saw like this (as would be the case in countries with sillier weapon control laws, like the UK) doesn't make people any safer but does make hiking more exposed to problems. As a law-abiding hiker taking my saw away isn't going to make other hikers any safer but does potentially put me in danger if I find an impassable obstacle and have to retrace my steps, leaving me out in the woods after dark because I wasn't expecting to lose hours of time retracing and rerouting. Perhaps when walking along a city street you don't need a folding saw, but in my part of the world it has come in very handy on multiple occasions. Needless to say the criminal element ignores the rules, as is frequently evident in inner-city Chicago, Baltimore etc.
One problem that seems to be very common among politicians of all stripes and all flavors is the sense that they know best. Since the country was founded on the concept of personal liberty it seems to me that liberty should be protected unless there are very compelling reasons to restrict it, and the inherent assumption is that all things should be allowed unless there is a very clear reason to prohibit it. At the same time the government should be reined in unless there is a very clear and compelling reason to permit government involvement in something. If nothing else it offers more protection to the 48% of the population who don't want to be ruled over by the 52%. In the analogy that likens democracy to two wolves and a sheep voting on who is for dinner, any system that governs the people must focus on protecting the sheep more than granting the wolves their wish.
thefederalist.com
