There is something seriously wrong with us. Is it just me? Has it always been this way? It feels like we’re letting ourselves be ruled by the lunatic fringes of society. On every side, for every issue, the voices of moderation and reason are drowned out by crazy-ass jeering from the cheap seats. Is that the way it’s supposed to be?

I spend way too much time like this.

I don’t want anyone getting all “No kidding, those (insert political/social group/quasi-group/trend here) are cray-cray!” because it’s not just them, it’s you—and me, too. Do you ever catch yourself making note of one opinion or view held by someone and immediately and forever that person becomes just that opinion? Of course you don’t. If you caught yourself doing that, you’d stop it ,right?

But then how can all conservatives be racist pro-lifers who want to hand America to Big (insert industry) while they blast away at random wildlife. How can all liberals be baby-killing communists who think the Constitution is something you use to clean the bloodstains off of the country’s past? Why is there no middle? Why is everyone who refuses to identify as a single big-basket philosophy a “low-information voter,” as if stupidity and ignorance were ever associated with avoiding the extremes.

It goes beyond me how we’ve allowed “voices crying in the wilderness” to speak for us, to even influence our opinions and decisions. Here’s a clue about those guys: they spend their time crying in the wilderness because they’re too bugshit crazy to be allowed in-doors where the grown-ups are talking.

The last ten national elections have shown that Americans are still pretty central-biased. As a group, we still have a pretty good bullshit-detector. We’ll give someone a chance to prove their theories, but, as a nation we don’t subscribe to any philosophy whole-heartedly without some kind of verifiable result.

So why doesn’t it sound like it? I don’t just mean the news media, either. Internet comments sections and forums are filled with angry vituperative fired blindly in all directions. Those rare occasions when a compromise is suggested or a moderate opinion is raised, they’re shouted down—sometimes with death threats.

It’s time to move the children’s table back out of the dining room, so the rest of us can talk.