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Most days, I read or skim five newspapers. Like many, I strive for some sort of balance. But it is difficult. Families and friends avoid politics for fear personal animosities will subsume relationships. Partisanship is everywhere, especially in the media. Either we, as a people, have become reflective of the them, or they of us. We read and listen to one side; we ignore (and condemn)those who think differently. Think of our universities, network TV and late-night comedians. The consequence is that real news is hard to discern. We all have examples of a news item picked up by The Wall Street Journalthat is ignored or exaggerated by The New York Times, or vice versa. Editorial pages smack of hypocrisy, sanctimony, mendacity and schadenfreude, depending on which side of the story the editor finds him or herself. Often, I find myself – and I am sure I am not alone – tossing the papers aside in frustration and picking up a novel, a Wodehouse for its comic relief, or a Times crossword puzzle for its mental stimulation. I am not without prejudice, as you all know, so find myself wondering:why is the Left so consumed with hate? I know many of these people and many are friends. And I know they wonder:why am I so stupid, insensitive and obtuse? I don’t think I am, and my guess is that most of my friends are not filled with hate. But we have allowed extremists to define our opinions; and politicians, watching which way the clouds move, sail with the wind.
The problem, as I see it, is that both sides fail to recognize that we, generally, have the same ends – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (and all that encompasses). It is in the means to achieve common goals where we differ. In recent years, as rhetoric has amplified, a desired political end has justified not only nasty words but acts of violence, “whatever it takes,” as one Democrat put it. We saw it in the Senate Visitor’s Gallery during the Kavanaugh hearings and in restaurants that forced out Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Ted Cruz, among others. Listening to the bickering of Senators last month reminded one of Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach,” “…where ignorant armies clash by night.” “Never argue with a fool,”my father used to say, “for a passer-by could not tell which was the fool.” Like a lover’s quarrel, both parties may be at fault, but both parties are not equally at fault. Despite a mainstream media that would have us believe otherwise, it is the left that has elevated hateful discourse to new levels.
In a Wall Street Journalop-ed last September titled “Why the Left is Consumed with Hate,” Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute explained what he thought was the answer: “The great crisis for the left today – the source of its angst and hatefulness – is its encroaching obsolescence.” Perhaps? I don’t know. In my opinion, part of that angst stems from the failure of the progressive Presidency of Barack Obama to leave a lasting legacy. Despite being elected President twice and remaining popular as an ex-President, Mr. Obama, over the course of his eight years in office, saw Democrats lose the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Worse, Democrats lost heavily in state and local elections. In 2008, there were twenty-eight Democrat governors and twenty-two Republican governors. Eight years later, Democrats had lost twelve governorships and Republicans had gained eleven. (Bill Walker of Alaska is an Independent.) During those same years, Democrats lost over a thousand state legislative seats. Mr. Obama may remain personally popular, but he destroyed the Democrat Party.
