The American Mind

The politics of division

William Hillman

(7/2017) Last month Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, was shot while practicing baseball for an upcoming congressional game. Since this event, news outlets have been tripping over themselves to create the narrative. The right has been blaming the democratic rhetoric of hate. Democrats have blamed Donald Trump and go to their old trick bag of blaming American gun culture. The truth is the shooter was a nut, plain and simple. I don’t have much to say about it. You can’t blame the entire anti-Trump movement for the act of one person any more than you could blame the pro-life movement for the actions of Robert Lewis.

I will admit the Trump hate is reaching an all-time high and it is verging on just plain insanity.

Look at some of the reaction to Trump from the entertainment industry.

BBC likened Trump to Lord Voldemort. Then J.K Rowling objected saying, "Voldemort was not that bad."

Johnny Depp says its time for another presidential assassination.

Robert De Niro has called the president a "pig" and said he would like to punch him.

The "personality," Chelsea Handler, has been on a non-stop assault of the Trump children since the election.

In May, Kathy Griffin mimicked (what seems to be an Islamic extremist ritual) a beheading of President Trump. She then had the gall to blame the public backlash she suffered on the same President Trump. Makes one question her sanity.

For the last few months Progressives have gathered in New York city’s Central Park to satisfy their hematolagnia fetish by watching a simulated murder of President Trump. Show after show they came.

The main stream media has defended these actions and comments as free speech. I agree that it is free speech and just because I don’t like it is no reason to demand it stop. But, this is a one way street for the MSM and the left. If the table was turned would still support these comments and actions as free speech. My guess is they would label it as "hate speech" and call for the purveyors convicted of a "hate crime".

Imagine for a moment what the reaction would have been if the part of Caesar was played by a pair shaped- pantsuit wearing drunk middle-aged woman. Or, Kathy Griffin holding the bloodied decapitated head of Nancy Pelosi. The left and the main stream media would have gone nuts.

Interesting to think about, but it would never happen because the entertainment industry is made up of lefty cult Marxists.

The thing about Hollywood and the media’s constant attack of Trump and Trump supporters is that none of it leads to any honest debate for discussions of the issues. All it’s doing is galvanizing anti–Trump radicals and pro-Trump supporters. The anti-Trump are the real dividers.

Maybe that is the real goal, division and destruction.

Is what we are seeing the final act of the politics of subdivision? The establishment has split us into groups. Now is it trying to break off communications between those groups? Is the left trying to make Trump the issue in an effort to avoid and distract people from the real issues? I believe so. This is one of Saul Alinsky’s rules: "avoid arguing issues, make it emotional by making it about a person. And you label that person evil." We have touched on this in previous articles. Anything associated with that person then becomes evil. Any action against that evil is justified.

The left knows that imagery is power. They and their friends in the media have used every trick out of Paul Joseph Goebbels’s book. The imagery of Trump as an evil buffoon is everywhere, in sitcoms, on stage, in songs, in cartoons. It is an all-out assault, modeled on World War II propaganda.

It is having its desired effect at the extremes of the left. Since they now see Trump as evil and those associated with him as evil, all means to stop him are justified. This means violence and intimidation. It is the Left radicals that the media is trying to provoke. To quote Alinsky again, "Society has good reason to fear the radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. Conservative interests know that while liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of conservatives."

All of this is evident in the clashes we see on college campuses, where speakers, as well as students with opposing opinions are physically attacked. Another rule from Alinsky, use the rules of society, in this case free speech, to seize power, then change the rules so it cannot be used against you. The radicals now use political correctness to deny freedom of speech to anyone that opposes their power.

Is this media blitz having an effect on more than just the radicals? Possibly.

I did a small unscientific survey of a cross section of my friends asking them what they thought were the biggest problems facing the country today.

People I would classify as anti-Trump said the biggest problem was "Trump."

Trump supporters had various answers but most included the following: unemployment, stagnate wages, cost of education, cost of health care, inner cities, and the opioid epidemic.

Even my own interaction with my anti-Trump friends, which used to be on substantive issues now goes something like this:

My friend: "How can you support Trump?"

Me: "I don’t like the direction the country’s going in. The growing income gap, regulations that destroy small business, the effect globalism is having on the middle and lower income classes."

My friend: "I cannot believe you voted for that man after he said those vial things 20 years ago"

Me: "It was simple, of all the candidates running in both parties, he was the only one that offered an alternative to the failed progressive agenda of the last 20 plus years."

My friend: "But he said those things".

Me: deep sigh.

The biggest fear I have is we stop agreeing on the problems. We have always disagreed on the solutions, but at least agreed on the problems. If we cannot agree on the problem, we have nothing to talk about. I only hope that this politics of divisions, as the left is now playing it, does not do irreparable damage to our Great Nation.