Uncivil discourse is pulling the country toward all-out hatred

It is evening in America, and the time is five minutes to hate. The uncivil political war Democrats and Republicans have been waging against each other is pulling us closer to all-out hatred with every tick of the congressional clock. One party shouts yes and the other, having risen to more political power on a tide of anger, yells no at the top of its lungs. They are hell-bent on destroying each other and the American political system in the process.

Politicians can't seem to be civil to each other anymore. Political debate has become far too personal and pejorative. An entire election season was spent venting anger over politics and the media lost no time in pointing out over and over again how angry voters were, instigating confrontation wherever and whenever it could.

We have elected a cadre of ideologues incapable of working with anyone who has a different viewpoint. They are fond of quoting chapter and verse from their belief systems, but cannot tell us how they will work with their counterparts to fashion a working government. We see them standing in a phalanx at press conferences. Every time one of them says something, the media trot out a different one to rebut the dogma with double dog dogma.

We have the news reported to us and then must suffer through the testimony of so-called experts who analyze the news and tell us what it means. Even the experts have differing viewpoints. No wonder we are confused. We can't tell who's right or wrong and we don't have political leaders who can stitch together ideas from both sides of the aisle to get the people's business done.

Politicians have become larger than life, and many are trying to convince the nation that they know the cure for all that ails us. For many, paring down the government -- not Americans taking more responsibility for our own bad behavior -- has become the strategy for fixing what is wrong with America. Government has become the bad guy, and things won't get better until we reduce its size in our lives, until we reduce its pervasiveness. But the push for a smaller government hasn't stopped politicians from invading our daily lives. They do it from national, state and local venues. There appears to be no stopping them. They answer to no one, except at election time, and then it's just more nebulous rhetoric that makes it almost impossible to prove whether they were right or wrong on their policy issues.

We are a divided nation and we need enlightened leadership from our politicians. It is not about which side wins, but about all of us winning. We need politicians who are artistic and skillful at compromise and who are good at crafting legislation. George Washington said, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

In recent times, irresponsible action has endangered us all. There were even some who seemed to want economic catastrophe, strife and heightened incivility, and were OK with putting us all in harm's way for the sake of their political ideologies. The alarming trend toward hard-line and extreme viewpoints can produce extremists who are willing to commit harmful acts.

Tragedies like the wounding of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others and the wounding of eleven more at a political event in Arizona should have given us pause. The carnage in Norway was yet another example of what hard-line political views can engender.

Many politicians have said that these perpetrators were deranged individuals acting alone. That may or may not be so; we may never know for sure. But there is no doubting that there are people who are influenced by negative political rhetoric and the tone of politics. Some of them are psychopaths and schizophrenics; some are haters who are nourished and driven by detestation, who are succored by smash-mouth politics.

We should be more than seriously concerned. We should be afraid. There are those who are waiting by the clock, watching the hour tick closer to hate.

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Akmed Khalifa holds degrees from Metropolitan State University, studied as an artist in residence at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, and is a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing from Hamline University.

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