States and qatar. What will bring the crisis to a close . I will ask qatars former Prime Minister. Also, the trump boom. Why have american stock markets gone up, up and further up while the country is mired in political turmoil and paralysis . Well have an explanation. Finally, americas census counts its people every ten years. This country is embarking on a census to count its islands, and there are thousands of them. But first heres my take. This weeks shooting at a congressional baseball practice was a ghastly example of the Political Polarization that is ripping this country apart. Political scientists have shown that congress is more divided than at any time since the end of reconstruction. I for one am struck not simply by the depth of partisanship these days but increasingly its nature. The feeling seems to me that people on the other side of the divide are not just wrong and to be argued with, they are immoral and must be muzzled or punished. This is not about policy. The chasm between left and right during the cold war is far wider than it is today. Many on the left want a nationalized or substantiate industries. On the right they wanted a total rollback of the new deal. Todays divisions feel relatively small. Partisanship today is more about identity. The scholars, ronald englehart and pippa morris have argued that the people have begun to define themselves less by traditional economic measures and instead by identity, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation. I would add social class, something rarely spoken of in america but a powerful determinant of how we see ourselves. The 2016 election, for example, had a lot to do with social class, with noncollege educated rural voters reacting against the professional urban elite. The dangerous aspect of this new form of politics is that identity does not lend itself easily to compromise. When the core divide was economic, you could always split the difference. If one side wanted to spend 100 billion and the other wanted to spend zero, well, there was a number in between. The same is true with tax cuts or welfare policy. But if the core issues are about identity, culture and religion, think about abortion, gay rights, confederate monuments, immigration, official languages, then compromise seems almost immoral. American politics in that sense is becoming more like middle eastern politics where there is no middle ground between being a sunni and a shiite. Ive seen this shift in the reactions to my own writing and later my television show. When i started writing columns two decades ago, the disagreements were often scathing but almost always about the substance of the issue. Increasingly there is little discussion about the substance, mostly attacks often involving my race or ethnicity. Today everything becomes fodder for partisanship. Consider the production of Julius Caesar where he resembles President Trump. They are claiming that it deplore ph glorifies the assassination of a president and seeking to defund the production. Since i tweeted a line praising the production, ive received a barrage of attacks, many of them quite nasty. In 2012 a production of the same play had an obamalike caesar and no one complained. In fact the assassination was a disaster, leading to civil war anarchy and the fall of the roman republic. The assassins were defeated, humiliated, racked with guilt, died horrible deaths. The plays director has explained the message he intended to convey. Quote, Julius Caesar can be a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. Political theater is as old as human civilization. A sophisticated play by shakespeare that actually presents caesar, or trump, in a mixed, somewhat favorable light is something to be discussed, not censored, and certainly not blamed for the actions of a single deranged shooter. I recently gave a speech at Bucknell University in which i criticized americas mostly liberal colleges for silencing views they deemed offensive, arguing that it was bad for the students and the country. The same holds for conservatives who try to mount campaigns to defund art they deem offensive. Do conservatives now want central park to be their own special safe space . I for one will keep arguing that liberals and conservatives should open themselves to all kinds of opinions and ideas that differ from their own. Instead of trying to silence, excommunicate and punish, lets look at the other side and try to listen, engage, and when we must, disagree. For more go to cnn. Com fareed and read my Washington Post column this week, and lets get started. So exactly how can the left and the right, the democrats and the republicans of the United States, stop this struggle . How can they reconcile . Thats what i want to talk about today with a group of very smart people who have given a lot of thought to these subjects. David blackenhorn is a thinker and author and president of better angels, a group dedicated to reuniting america. Jill abramson is the former executive editor of the New York Times, currently teaching, writing at harvard. Ed luce is the author of a new book, the retreat of western liberalism. And a distinguished professor of peace and reconciliation at umass boston. David blackenhorn, let me start with you. What do you think is dividing us so deeply these days . Is it fundamentally economics, social class, culture, how do you see it . Were definitely divided by ideology left and right, but were also theres a tremendous class divide with the top 25 or 30 having less and less interaction with everybody else. Theres also a governing divide that people in the u. S. Both right and left dont trust anybody, even their own people, to be effective politicians. So theres id say three levels of polarization all increasing. How does it strike you, compared with other countries . Is america more divided . I believe its very important that we begin this program by acknowledging first the condition of congressman scalise and hope for him family and wish him well on his long way to recovery, but we should also acknowledge james hodgkinson. He has been demonized in the media, called evil and other things. And we forget in doing so that he was a human being, that he had a family, that he had children, that he laughed, that he cried, that he was happy, that he was sad. We forget that people mourn his loss. Theyre ashamed of him. And if we dont humanize him too, if we other him, we are really at what i would say the fundamental root of the conflict, and that is that we engage in behavior in which we other the other. We rob them of the legitimacy of their humanity. And i think that is true across societies in conflict in other places and also true in the United States. You have two segments of the population that for all intents and purposes dont know each other. With the rise of social media, rather than connecting people, it has disconnected them. What you have is people in blue states talking to people in blue states and people in red states talking to people in red states and neither are talking to each other. Ed luce, in your book, the retreat of western liberalism, you deal with this issue because you talk about how liberalism has always been premised on the idea that people can argue with one another, that there is a rational basis for argument and from that argument will come some kind of common wisdom. Do you think this has just collapsed in the United States . Well, i think if you look at what the Founding Fathers said and what other greats and liberal thinkers like jon Stewart Mills said, is that the clash of steel, the clash of ideas will always produce better outcomes. As long as this debate takes place in the public square. But what we have in todays america and in other democracies is quite separate public squares. So the late Daniel Patrick moynihan and another great liberal figure in the larger sense of the word liberal said youre entitled to your own opinions but youre not entitled to your own facts. Its very hard to have that intelligent argument if people are in different not only in different squares, but there isnt even a sort of connecting corridor between the squares. Its very hard to imagine how civility can ensue when people dont even meet each other or live near each other who hold different positions or let their children marry or wish their children to marry people of different views. So thats my concern, there is no public square. Jill, youve written that you think that while all this is true, this is not a situation where both sides are equally at fault. I do think that both sides are not equally at fault and that theres been a bit of a false equivalency at work, especially in the discussion over the past couple of days. I think that in terms of Political Leadership right now that both President Trump and the congressional leadership on the republican side are extremely divisive and that they are really benefitting from a kind of rage machine that operates in this country. And, yes, lets just think of two recent episodes. Health care and the repeal of obamacare. When the democrats were actually shaping that legislation originally and the obama white house, they had open hearings, public hearings. Right now the Republicanled Senate is having entirely secret process for formulating their bill. No hearings. They wont even brief democrats in the senate about whats in that legislation. And then when president obama nominated a moderate, merrick garland, to the supreme court, the republicans refused to take action and hold a hearing on his nomination. The democrats didnt do that with with President Trumps nominee. So it isnt equivalent behavior on both sides. All right. Im going to ask david bl blankenhorn to respond to that and whether it is more the republican fault, but also i want to get at what can we do to make things better and to look internationally where there are examples of reconciliation back in history. That covers you part way, so when it comes to pain relievers, why put up with just part of a day . Aleve, live whole not part. Tell you what, ill give it to you for half off. This is a story about mail and packages. And its also a story about people. 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There are over 100 million pieces of dna in every sample. With the microsoft cloud, we can analyze the data faster than ever before. If we can detect new viruses before they spread, we may someday prevent outbreaks before they begin. Z282uz zwtz y282uy ywty we are back with david blankenhorn, Jill Abramson, ed lewis and Padraig Omalley talking about lessons from abroad bridging americas vast political divide. David blankenhorn, i first have to ask you, its not just what Jill Abramson said. People at the American Enterprise institute and the Brookings Institute who have studied this and come to the conclusion that it is true that the republicans have become more extreme than the democrats. That while there is a polarization on both sides, the shift on the right is much more extreme than on the left. Do you buy that . Im familiar with that literature. I think theres a lot of truth to it. But today what im not that interested in figuring out whos more to blame. Im honestly not. Im mainly interested in recovering what was just called on the show the common public square, and thats why what im doing now, im going around the country and were bringing together people who are generally supportive of President Trump and people who are critical and were having meetings where we talk to one another. Not about one another, not at one another, but actually talk with one another. And were doing this around the country. And ill tell you, its a wonderful thing to see, because were not as when we actually talk to one another, were not as divided as we thought. Theres a lot less demonization. Theres a lot of reduction in rancor. Your Blood Pressure goes down. You feel better about your country. And thats what we need to do. Irrespective of what the politicians do, irrespective of bad behavior in washington and irrespective of who is most to blame for the mess were in. Padraig, what other lessons from Northern Ireland . Every human being has two personas. One is the ideological persona and the other is the human persona. The ideological persona can be nationalism, can be marxism, can be socialism, can be any kind of ism. And then on the flip side you have the human being, who laughs, who cries, who cheers for his children, who wonder about their kids, and we must talk to that person, not to the ism. We must get back to not othering other people. And i hear what disturbs me a lot is that i watch a fair amount of msnbc. I am distraught that it has become it is adding to polarization because it has the same guests on not only night after night but sometimes two or three times in the same night and theyre all saying the same thing and theyre all trying to earn points against trump. That does not help and it does not help to say that one side is more at fault than the other. Jill, we can have people talk to one another, ordinary people, but what do you think is the role for leadership . Because it does seem to me, at least, that some part of this divide has been produced by a political elite that has becomin increasingly divisive and increasingly nasty to one another. Well, i agree with you on that. I do think that journalism does have a role to play if were going to have some kind of reconciliation and lessening of this very intense partisanship and extremism, you know, in either of the parties because i think what our society desperately needs is to regain a respect for facts. And the reality that there is an objective truth that can be obtained. And yes, there are many media organizations that compound partisanship and extremism, but there are a group of very high quality news organizations that try very hard to tell the news straight and to cover stories truthfully and bringing the reality of how people live to life in news stories, and i just think its incredibly dangerous right now that we live in a society where people cant even agree on what a fact is. Can i pick up on another point about leadership. I think an example that others have studied in south africa, why is it that south africa didnt descend into a politics of racial vengeance against the white minority that sustained apartheid for so long. I think theres one Pretty Simple answer and that is nelson mandela. Nelson mandela was an extraordinary individual and he set the tone for the politics through the truth and Reconciliation Commission that was a nonpunitive way of looking at the crimes of apartheid and through just his very manner. Hes very bearing as a leader of the new south africa, so leadership is very important. And i cant sort of be asked my views on this subject that without mentioning that it works the other way. When you get leaders who demonize and who call out and who insult and who mock, like donald trump does, then youre going to get an equally bad signal and an enabling behavior for people out there. So i totally agree with the sentiments of what everybody has said, that you need to get people who disagree with each other talking to each other, seeing their human side. I think thats absolutely vital. But i also think it is critical that you have leaders who do not go for the lowest sort of human insult whenever they feel that theyre being challenged. Im sorry to say, but thats kind of the elephant in the room here. It is President Trump. Well, this is a fascinating conversation and we will have to have it again because i dont think this problem is going away. Thank you all. Next on gps President Trump says he wants to fix americas crumbling infrastructure, which is great. But it turns out he wants somebody else to pay for most of us. I say thats a bridge too far, a rusting, rotting, broken bridge too far, when we come back. You dont let anything keep you sideli