What a rare and special respite. Thank you Olympics!

Getting to cheer for American contestants without having to first determine if they were conservative or liberal, socialist or capitalist, Republican or Democrat felt like a blessing. Suddenly, it did not matter if they were white, black, Hispanic or Asian, believers or atheists, vegans or carnivores, one percenters or deplorables. Their sexual habits were not an issue. All that mattered was that they were Americans representing our country.

Such positiveness used to be quite common for us. Not so much any more.

Author Howard Burton writing in The Hill described what he called “the average American temperament these days.”

“Somehow, an ever-opinionated but fundamentally kind-hearted people have become transformed into a collection of bitter, irascible, clannish, overly sensitive creatures perpetually mired in a constant state of flinty irritation at ‘the other half’ of the nation, inexplicably determined to spend their days hurling increasingly bitter ad hominem accusations at each other across a patently irreconcilable divide.”

“The present state of American dysfunctionality — for that’s really what it is, let’s not mince our words here — is the inevitable result of a media landscape that has been slowly and steadily demonizing ‘the other side’ for decades (pick your side) so that ‘the news’ has inevitably become transformed from ‘current affairs’ or simply ‘what’s happening’ to ‘how they are out to get you.’

Hmmm.

An article by Michael Dimock and Richart Wike published by the Pew Research Center asked why America is so cleaved and responded:

“In their study of polarization across nations, Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue argue that polarization runs particularly deep in the U.S. in part because American polarization is ‘especially multifaceted.’ According to Carothers and O’Donohue, a ‘powerful alignment of ideology, race and religion renders America’s divisions unusually encompassing and profound. It is hard to find another example of polarization in the world,’ they write, ‘that fuses all three major types of identity divisions in a similar way.’”

“What’s unique about this moment – and particularly acute in America – is that these divisions have collapsed onto a singular axis where we find no toehold for common cause or collective national identity.”

Hmmm.

For me, and apparently the many Americans shown in attendance in France, the Olympics provided such a toehold. I felt a common cause in cheering for our athletes and certainly felt a strong sense of national identity.

As the Olympics fade and national politics recaptures our focus, I fear our judgmental “flinty irritation” with each other will return. How sad.

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.