Obama ran his duplicitous campaign on “hope and change” with an underlying theme of bringing Americans together, or so the politically ignorant thought. Ironically our first black president did more to destroy race relations and divide the nation than any other politician in recent memory… up until that point in time anyway.
Trump came along next and, surprisingly to the left, won the oval office. The absolute hate and venom spewed at the man who actually brought far greater prosperity to most Americans (especially those of color), energy independence, and stability and greater prospects for lasting peace in the world was demonized by teeth-gnashing leftists.
And then Biden tripped up the steps to the White House. Here is a man with a long history of racist comments, no significant accomplishments, and as former Obama defense Secretary Robert Gates so aptly characterized as having “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Add to that an unmatched penchant for corruption and apparent cognitive degradation while systematically seeming to be in a hurry to finish the “fundamental transformation” of America that Obama promised, and the chasm between right and left has widened to the point of being irreparable today.
We often hear talk about this un-spannable divide these days with folks on both sides of the chasm wondering if a new civil war is coming. There does indeed seem to be damned little to suggest that we can fix this divide and unite our nation once again. How does one find common ground when many of the points of contention are diametrically opposed and argued so vehemently?
The self-declared “party of science” believes men can become women and vice versa. They believe that men can menstruate, while the other side knows that it is a biological fact that this only occurs to women. They think that men should be able to compete in sports as girls, while the other side sees the absurdity, dangerousness, and unfairness of this charade.
The leftists believe that being “colorblind” is a racist notion while the other side happens to believe what that great “racist” Dr. Martin Luther King believed in that being colorblind was the antidote to racism and that character is what matters.
How are we to bridge the chasm between those that think the murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping of innocent men, women, and children in Israel which surpassed even the Nazi regime with their glee of doing so is morally superior to the Israelis wanting to only live in peace instead of constantly being attacked by Hamas, Hezbollah, and myriad other Iranian-backed morally-repugnant terrorists?
In the middle of this truly existential crisis where the people of Israel are fighting for their very existence so as to live in their country in peace and freedom, it seems that President Biden and his political allies, including Senator Majority Leader and ironically Jewish Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), are making efforts to overthrow the elected prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, by calling for new elections. These activities are nothing but a cynical attempt to influence Muslim voters in key states during America’s upcoming election. Leftist think this is permissible or even good, while the other side sees this for the morally detestable political chicanery that it is.
How are we to reconcile the divide between those who believe young children should be brought to drag queen shows and those who believe this hyper-sexualization of our children is morally despicable?
What about those that think defunding the police will reduce violent crime and help curb racism over those that fall victim to the surge to such crime in areas where such policies have been enacted?
And what about those that think “defending democracy” means to try and throw up any roadblock imaginable to ensure an opposing candidate or issue is unable to get on a ballot for the people to decide? So, if a majority of the citizenry wants and votes for a particular value or candidate deemed conservative, democracy is “threatened” according to the left? Isn’t that the very definition of democracy—the candidate or policy with the most votes wins?
How are we to bridge the divide between those who believe in suppressing free speech if they deem any given speech as “hateful” or “misinformation” and those who believe in actual free speech, even when they disagree with it?
What about those that think cutting off healthy body parts of our still-developing children and injecting dangerous cross-sex hormones and hormone blockers into them in the name of “gender affirming care” with those that see this as genital, psychological, and bodily mutilation of our children?
Ironically the Left never perceives itself as imposing its values, and yet it was largely the Left that forced as many Americans as possible to get the frequently harmful COVID-19 vaccine and to utilize ineffectually-proven masks in public. The Left forced young people who were at minimal risk from the virus to get vaccinated and forced children to miss school for nearly two years. How do we bridge that gap with the other side that saw this as hyperbole, governmental over-reach, and unacceptable intrusion into personal choice.
And speaking of “choice”, how do we ever bridge the gap where one side thinks abortion on demand up until the time of birth should be a woman’s right to choose her own “reproductive health care” and the other side’s acknowledgement that this is a human life that is being slaughtered on the altar of “choice”?
Finally, leftists either deny Biden’s corruption and
accepting of bribes despite a mountain of evidence in support of the facts or
they simply think it doesn’t matter as long as Trump doesn’t return to
office. The other side may not support
Trump but they think that bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors committed by our president matter
and that Biden should be impeached and removed from office for such deplorable
violations of trust accordingly.
This is just a partial list of some of the greatest arguments that divide our nation, and every last one of these positions is mutually contradictory. It is ironic that those that hold these diametrically-opposed positions on either end of the issues also acknowledge that these are unbridgeable.
I wish I had a solution to bridge this divide, but like those flipping me off on the other side of the chasm, I am not willing to compromise on these core values. And neither are they. So, what happens from here? Does the chasm only widen, the rhetoric become even more heated, and eventually the violence in support of opposing ideas finally come to horrible fruition? Does the nation divide into blue and red states of separate nations?
Sadly, it seems that the Left-Right divide we are seeing today is at least as great as the Union-Confederacy divide before and during the Civil War. Ironically the only thing that remains the same is that it was the Democratic Party that opposed freedom then, and it is the Democratic Party that opposes freedom today.
