In this week’s New York Times Magazine, Jonathan Chait has an article entitled, What the Left Doesn’t Understand About Obama. It has been shared by many of my friends online. Some are strong Obama supporters who criticize liberals and Democrats who don’t support the President. Others are strong liberals who continue to criticize the President. A few are media critics who criticize the New York Times. I find myself agreeing most closely with this final group.

I suspect the real issue is "What the media doesn't understand about the left". Many conservatives seem committed to black and white thinking, "America, love it or leave it" and "My way or the highway". Many liberals are capable of much deeper thought. We believe that criticizing our President and our country is a key part to supporting it. From a policy perspective, I believe I am much more liberal than President Obama. I wish he took stronger positions on issues that I care about, and I speak up, encouraging him to do so. Does this mean I don't support him? Not at all. That is part of my support of President Obama. He's done a good job so far, and I'll do everything I can to help him do an even better job for the rest of this term and for another term.

Yet the bigger issue seems to be to get people beyond thinking about left and right, right and wrong, or black and white (double entendre very much intended). We live in a complicated world where the black son of a white woman can be President of our country. We need to get people to start thinking much more critically about the news they read? Are they really getting all the news that is fit to print, or only the news that the editors of one organization or another deems worthy? Are the assumptions underlying the politicians’ speech, too quickly repeated by the press, really valid assumptions? Is America bankrupt, or is it the values of those who refuse to care for the poor that are bankrupt?

We live a world where our relationships to the groups of people we belong are shifting. We have our groups of online friends. Some people consider another group of people, known as a corporation, a person. Everyone seems to be focusing on how all this affects them as individuals, and too few people seem to be thinking seriously about what our social contract means, not only in terms of governments, but also in terms of corporations, neighborhoods, and online groups.

Maybe, it isn’t even “What the media doesn’t understand about the left”, but “What the media doesn’t understand about the social contract in the twenty-first century”.