We’ve lived through a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, dozens of wars, the dawn of social media, the Great Recession, a worldwide epidemic, and last week, an attempted assassination of a former U.S. president. That’s enough major historical events for a lifetime and that’s only since 2001.

It’s time for the rise of the political moderate.

Having grown up in the 1990s, my time online was limited to 30 minutes a day. And thank goodness for that. The things I saw would make you blush.

At the age of 10, I could barely type on a keyboard, yet I could find dirty photos and pirate music.

It wasn’t until MySpace was created in 2003 that social media really took hold.

Now it’s how the majority of us get our news and according to Pew Research, 86% of Americans visit at least one digital platform each day. That same study concluded that 57% of Millennials get their news from social media — the same social media that Russians and Chinese are using to interfere with our elections.

This isn’t to say the Facebooks and the TikToks of the world are solely to blame. Their algorithms keep us glued to our screens and that addiction helped lead to an insurrection but other, more traditional media also hold blame.

Turn on FOX News to see how whack-a-do the left is or visit MSNBC to hear the same about the right.

We need a lot more moderation in our politics.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see a campaign advertisement about someone who owns a truck, but only uses it for trips to the lumber yard on the weekends?

Wouldn’t it be grand to see someone on the ballot who believes it’s okay to want to save the environment but isn’t opposed to international travel?

Wouldn’t you prefer to hear a politician arguing for the essential need to rebuild our infrastructure rather than whether they’re too old or too many times a convicted felon?

We’ve had our fill of politicians standing on soapboxes feigning moral superiority while they’re hiring hookers on the weekends.

If we’re going to continue this experiment of democracy, we’re going to need to get along.

Even politicians can have good intentions, at least at the start of their careers, and I’m willing to believe malfeasance can be explained by ineptitude and that we shouldn’t blame conspiracy when incompetence will do.

But being a moderate isn’t fun or exciting.

And therein lies the problem: social and more traditional media are tearing our country in half because click-bait and conflict sell.

The more intense the story, the more eyes you get. The more eyes, the more advertising revenue.

Perhaps then it was inevitable that media would trade their pencils for flame throwers.

In reality, no reporter (let alone a media outlet) is without bias, and that makes the notion of fair news a bit Lilliputian.

The real danger is the pretense of thinking you or your news source are unbiased — and that’s the cliff on which we dwell these days.

We get accused fairly regularly of “just trying to sell newspapers.”

Guilty as charged. And the grocery uptown is trying to sell milk — it’s how they stay in business.

Sensational used to be a bad word in journalism but that was a false flag —readers want to be titillated.

There are lines that none of us in the media should cross — like misleading an audience when you know better. Or pretending as though any one of us comes to an issue without bias. Inherent bias is real. Being aware of inherent bias, seeking input widely, pursuing facts and admitting when we’re wrong — that is the promise we make to our readers.   

When it comes to local news, at least, getting it right sells more papers than anything.

But please, use a critical eye when reading this source or any other news source and ask yourself: Are they being real?