Liberals are godless commies! Conservatives are heartless bigots! Digital technology is bringing us together as never before! Digital technology is isolating us as never before! Derek Jeter is overrated! Derek Jeter is an all-time great!

Opinions, it is said, are like, um, certain bodily portals: Everyone has one. And more and more, everyone feels free to stick theirs right in your face. Yuk.

“IMHO,” indeed. If there’s one thing people are not humble about these days, it’s their opinions.

Take the Sandusky scandal. Even now, three months after the filing of the charges and the release of the Grand Jury report, there is so much we do not know about was seen, heard and done. And we may never know. Much of it may not even be knowable.

According to a recent story in the New York Times, the more we study memory, the less reliable memory turns out to be:

“Hundreds of studies have catalogued a long list of circumstances that can affect how memories are recorded and replayed, including the emotion at the time of the event, the social pressures that taint its reconstruction, even flourishes unknowingly added after the fact.”

The Times story didn’t mention the Sandusky scandal, which had hit the news just a few weeks prior. But I couldn’t help thinking of the emotions and social pressures that may have tainted the memories of the men who were involved in the conversations about what Mike McQueary witnessed in the showers 10 years ago.

McQueary’s testimony is a small part of the case against Jerry Sandusky – there’s the testimony of all those alleged victims, after all – but it is a huge part of the legal case against Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, as well as the moral case against Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier. And here, memories, and possibly motives, differ.

McQueary has testified that he’s pretty sure he saw Jerry Sandusky having sexual intercourse with a boy, but that he could not bring himself to be that explicit with Paterno. That accords with Paterno’s testimony: He said McQueary told him he saw Sandusky “fondling or doing something of a sexual nature.”

According to his testimony at the preliminary hearing of the charges against Curley and Schultz in December, McQueary went into a bit more detail when he met with the two administrators: He described what he saw as “extremely sexual” and indicated that “some kind of intercourse was going on.”

But that’s not what Curley and Schultz said they heard. Curley recalled “inappropriate conduct” and “horsing around.” Schultz recalled the grabbing of genitals while wrestling, which he characterized as “not that serious … no indication that a crime had occurred.” Both deny being told anything about intercourse.

If McQueary is remembering correctly and truthfully, then there’s no excuse for Curley and Schultz (and possibly Spanier) not having gone to the police.

If Curley and Schultz are remembering correctly and truthfully, we might be able to see how, not wanting to destroy Sandusky or get the university embroiled in an ugly scandal, they would hope it would be enough to tell Sandusky to quit “horsing around” with kids in ways that could be misinterpreted. But Schultz, at least, is still on the hook for having known about the 1998 investigation. So are Paterno and McQueary, with their greater appreciation of the “seriousness” of the misconduct, for not having followed up – as Paterno himself acknowledged.

Bottom line, we don’t know who is remembering correctly and truthfully. Maybe McQueary was so uncomfortable with his role that he watered down his account to a degree that allowed Curley and Schultz to categorize Sandusky’s behavior as horseplay, which would have been how they preferred to look at it. Maybe McQueary has talked himself into remembering that he was more frank than he actually was. Maybe Curley and Schultz are guilty as charged.

Has all this uncertainty stopped anyone from weighing in on the guilt or innocence of the various parties? Heck, no. In this cultural moment, one must stake out a position and defend it against all comers. To say, “well, let’s wait and see,” or, “you know, this is a complicated issue,” is to lack a moral compass.   

It wouldn’t matter so much if the bomb throwing only took place in the comments section appended to every online news story. Let the vox populi ring out. But the indifference to facts and the unwillingness to grant legitimacy to anyone who disagrees with us seems to have spilled over into and suffused our politics, which more and more resembles a demolition derby.

Forget compromise. Forget seeing the world from the other guy’s point of view. Forget the possibility that we may be wrong, that we may not know all the facts.

We don’t discuss anymore. We flame.