RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/15/mob-rule-and-the-death-of-trust/

It’s been clear to millions of Americans for decades that the media was biased, that the Democratic Party and their government employee union allies controlled and corrupted big city elections, and that the “climate crises” and the threat of “white supremacy” were being oversold. These and other annoyances were perennial. But for many skeptics, the level of mistrust remained tolerable. The system itself was resilient. Nothing is perfect. The tide can turn. The good guys could still win. The 2015 arrival of Donald Trump on the national political scene changed the rules. The system not only revealed itself to be even more fraudulent than most people had previously believed, but it became malevolent.

For over six years, representatives of every established institution in the country have stereotyped Americans who voted for President Trump as bigots, idiots, ignoramuses, haters, psychopaths, and traitors. The virulence of this condemnation has escalated each year, culminating during the 2022 mid-term election cycle with a full-court press to tag anyone who supports the former president as a fascist and and potential “domestic terrorist.”

Those who openly proclaimed their support for Trump, even if they expressed themselves with tact and rational arguments, focusing on his policies, and even while acknowledging Trump’s often confrontational persona, lost lifelong friends and faced threats to their livelihood. By the millions, they were made to feel unwelcome in their own country.

Anger breeds anger. Contempt breeds contempt. With Newtonian certainty, the disgust has become mutual. But on one side, with rare exceptions, the entire institutional weight of the most powerful nation in the world has lined up. The media, the search engine and social media platforms, the entertainers, the teachers and professors, the corporations, the government agencies, the politically active billionaires: Almost all of them proclaim Trump supporters to be horrible, dangerous people.

This asymmetrical assault is personal and profoundly alienating. Perhaps more than 100 million Americans now believe, with good reason, that they have been completely rejected by the nation in which they grew up.

Trump didn’t attract millions of Americans to support him because of his bombastic attacks on his opponents in politics and the media. That was comedic relief. Trump’s instant and enduring popularity owes to the way he speaks for millions of people who feel betrayed by the institutions they need to trust. Trump’s resiliency offers inspiration to them as he defies a mob that has destroyed the lives of countless individuals who dare to challenge a growing assortment of absurdities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/leftists_are_dangerously_dehumanizing_their_political_opponents.html

On November 3, Sunny Hostin, a cohost on The View, said, “White suburban women voting for Republicans are like roaches voting for the bug spray Raid.” Her hostility supposedly stemmed from Republican opposition to abortion. A co-panelist Alyssa Farah Griffin pointed out her previous opposition to abortion based on her Catholic faith, but Hostin was not deterred. On the one hand, this is a silly spat on a silly show. On the other hand, it matters a great deal when someone with a national platform likens people to insects.

Hostin’s language is similar to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in 2018, referring to Jews as termites. Of course, Farrakhan is a hateful man who’s made a living from hate. He stopped attending college after three years and briefly made a living as a Calypso singer known as “Calypso Gene” before embracing his calling. He has generously expressed hatred of whites, Jews, and homosexuals. Hostin, however, has a different resume. She is a lawyer and has been in the media for a long time, including as a senior legal analyst for ABC News.

Two very different people but both doing something extremely dangerous, which is to dehumanize people. David Livingstone Smith has dedicated an entire book to this problem: Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. Smith argues that it is important to define and describe dehumanization because it is what opens the door to cruelty and genocide: “During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats. African Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman animals.”