Conversation

"American politics is bad because both sides are unwilling to compromise" sounds nice and well-meaning in the abstract, but it sneaks in a false symmetry. If you're a trans person, for example, and the other side is calling you an abomination who needs to be shunned, deprived of health care, and kept away from all children—your existence not even acknowledged to children—it's difficult to see where the compromise could be, or why justice and civility would counsel it even if you could find it.