Can’t even accept that there is such thing as “win-wins”. I tend to think of that as a problem with Trumpistan. But I try to spend some time walking in the other side’s shoes (which I learned almost 40 years ago is step one in any win-win negotiating strategy), which I can do to an extent through Trumpie friends, and right now, I’m reading the book “Rigged” by Mollie Hemingway (I’m only about 70 pages in, and it’s a tough pill to swallow for me). They think the left is all about culture wars, not the right. They point to too much emphasis on statues, and attempts to rewrite our national narrative, or to trash our national symbols and stories that have always been part of the basis for our national unity, among some other things.

Mollie Hemingway may be a grifter (and it may be my own biases leading me to believe that), but I don’t doubt the sincerity of the beliefs of my friends who are influenced by her or people like her. Or of those of a strongly pro-Trump colleague who looked at me wide-eyed with shock when I mentioned the innate divisiveness of today’s political right - she would call that “projection from the left”.

Walking in the shoes of the other side is a completely lost art in politics. Which, harking back to that seminar I took in my first job out of school in win-win negotiations, means win-win solutions are a lost negotiating result. So many things helped get us here - I linked an article about the role of gerrymandering, and I constantly rail against social media, but unfortunately, neither of those things or any of the others are going away.

So, I feel like the first thing we all have to do - left, right, and center - is learn to take a deep breath when we are about to tear into someone with an opposing view. And trust me, I know I need that as much as anyone else. But we’ll never see a win-win solution again if we don’t. I’m not sure how we solve any of our problems until we can tolerate each other far better than we do now.