How divided is America, really?

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

I was being interviewed (the infamous pre-interview) where they interview you and they try to find out where you are but basically they [the media] have a template of what they want. So then they go and try to find people to fit the template rather than getting people who may have more nuanced or balanced views to actually discuss the issues and enlighten the listener.

And the pre-interviewer said, “Now what is your view of Pope John Paul II?

I said, “Well, I think he is one of the transcendent, historical, and moral figures of the 20th century.”

They said, “Well that is not quite what we are looking for.”

I said, “What are you looking for?”

And they said, “We are looking for someone who believes he is the head of a false religion.”

And I said, “Well, you’re talking to the wrong guy.”

And they got someone! They got someone to come on and say this!

This happens over and over and over again. I have been rejected for literally hundreds of interviews because my position was “too nuanced, it wasn’t clear enough, it wasn’t quite what they were looking for.” The problem with this, I have enough interviews, it’s not that I didn’t get to do the interview. What concerns me is that, I believe, it is giving the American people the impression that the country is more divided than it is. Now, the country is divided, but I don’t think it is as divided as you would assume by watching all of cable news shows with their 24/7 shouting matches.

Americans are being led to believe by the media that they are more divided than they actually are, and I think a lot of people when they listen to these shouting matches, after a while they say, “Eh, a pox on both your houses! Nothing is ever going to change!” and they pull out of the process.

I think both of those are dangerous things, [1.] to believe that we are more divided than we actually are, that there is less common ground than there actually is, that there is less room for balanced discussion of serious disagreements and [2.] that people are going to be turned off by the shouting match.