海角大神

When anti-fascist left-wing extremists showed up in Portland, Ore., Sunday to counter a 鈥淒onald Trump free speech protest鈥� by right-wing extremists, both sides were ready for a fight.聽One picture of what police confiscated included bricks, knives, hammers, clubs, a wrench, a hatchet, and tear gas. While most Americans might condemn such an approach to protest, the national conversation of today is often little more civilized than a set of brass knuckles. The Portland Police cache is not unrelated to that broader trend.

But there was no large-scale violence, and there was a different snapshot, too. One pro-Trump protester spent most of the day sitting amid the left-wingers, not hurling bricks but asking honest questions. The protester newspaper that he likes to keep an open mind, trying to change people鈥檚 opinions and seeing if they can change his.

鈥淭here [were] a lot more intelligent people than I thought,鈥� he said. A liberal protester acknowledged: 鈥淵ou certainly have humanized a fair number of your allies.鈥�

That was a very different kind of conversation.