Both sides dig in. Both sides are sure they are right. Both sides are sure there is no middle ground — only winners and losers.

It is the story of our politics. It happens in halls of Harrisburg and the courthouses of counties and God knows it happens every day and every way in Washington in the Senate and the House of Representatives and the White House. As politics becomes more of a belief system than a position, it filters further and further into the groundwater, and that kind of entrenched position shows up with co-workers and families and neighbors.

The ugly pitched battle of the 2020 election might have seemed as bad as the partisan politics could get — until the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol — but there have been few signs that it is abating. But is that a big deal? What is the worst that could happen?

The examples are all around us. Especially this week.

For the past 11 days, one of the most sensitive hair-triggers in the world has been firing wildly in the Middle East. Hamas militants have fired at Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired back at the Gaza Strip. The world has watched helpless and horrified, knowing that there is little to do but wait for things to settle back into their tense status quo of imminent explosion. A cease-fire pressed pause on the conflict late Thursday.

Peace between the two sides is the kind of castle in the clouds that beauty queens talk about in aspirational answers to pageant questions, like curing cancer and ending world hunger. It has been tried again and again. President Clinton made an attempt at a 2000 summit at Camp David. It crumbled as some third-rail topics — including the status of Gaza — could not be discussed, much less resolved.

Sound familiar?

The story of the impasse of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may have different roots than the Sunnis and Shiites dispute or the religious triangle of the Muslims, Christians and Jews. It is not the same as the Irish and English fighting tooth and claw for centuries. It is not the U.S. political landscape.

But it isn’t far off, either.

In the same time that this short rehash of the Gaza problem has replayed itself in deadly fashion, the U.S. House of Representatives has been engaged in its own skirmishes — ousting Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership role and going back and forth about how and if there will be an investigation into the Capitol attack. In Pennsylvania, we survived the primary elections only to be flung headlong into new declarations of gubernatorial runs for 2022.

The germ at the center of every contest that starts as a dissent and ends with a body count is that people stopped trying to find solutions to a common problem and focused on finding a way to win.

The problem with that is there is a lot more middle ground than there are victory laps.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)