PORTLAND, Ore. — The arrest of the Florida man in connection with the mailed pipe bombs did not surprise Portland-based sociologist Randy Blazak.
He said rhetoric from the far right warns that the country is on the brink of destruction.
“That's often the way these groups work. They work on the notion society is about to fall apart at any minute. Things are about to collapse, and you really have to act now, or you are going to lose your country,” he said. “And so those seemingly extreme calls to violence all of a sudden seem more palatable because they're working against this ticking time clock of losing the country.”
It wasn't’ always this way.
“Compromise has become a dirty word,” said Kerry Tymchuk, Executive Director of the Oregon Historical Society.
He spent years in Washington DC working for Republican Senator Bob Dole.
Tymchuk said Oregon Republican Mark Hatfield understood how to compromise--and how to disagree without being nasty.
He said it was the same when he worked in Oregon for Republican Senator Gordon Smith.
“Back in the day when Senator Wyden and Senator Smith-- when Oregon had a Democrat and Republican senator, they became famous for traveling the state together to do joint town halls,” Smith said.” The only senators of different parties in the same state in the country, to do that. But by the end of the time, by the end of the 12 years together in the Senate, we couldn’t do the town halls anymore because of the people who would turn out to shut em down.”
At the Oregon Jewish Museum-- a new display with pictures from just before the Holocaust is opening this weekend.
Director Judy Margles worries the words now used in politics are hurting the nation.
“Words really do have power. They dehumanize -- and throughout what visitors see here--not only in our exhibitions about the holocaust but exhibitions about resistance and discrimination in Oregon. Definitely, words have power."
Which brings us back to Professor Blazak-- who said new research reveals a powerful technique to disagree without being nasty.
“If you talk about something else before you talk about what divides you --talk about the things that unite you. Could be your favorite sports team. Could be what your vision is for your children. It could be what your favorite recipes are. It could be pretty much anything that bonds you,” he said. “And then when you talk about something as polarizing as politics that conversation goes very differently.”
He added that the bond allows each side to disagree without being disagreeable.