“Promises only bind those who believe them.” Jacques Chirac
The first thing I saw this morning on Face Book was the post of a “news” article titled “The Democrats Should Be Impeached.” There were several likes (of which I was not one). The message was just another example of sour grapes at discovering that even the president may be liable for serious errors in judgment that can cross the borders of what is fair or even legal. The president’s loyal base have done everything they can to bolster the commander in chief just short of canonization or deification, excusing, along the way, behaviors that would have put former presidents in prison.
This very narrow view exists, however, on both sides. There are Democrats who are also guilty of getting their news from limited or completely one-sided sources (i.e. MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal). Constant exposure to just one party’s messages, interpretations, and news sources can ultimately turn some folks into rabid, self-righteous goons, always ready to pounce upon anyone who may have a different take on whatever happens in Washington. This includes the president himself. What bothers me is that a news outlet like Fox has become a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine to convince a naïve public that the crude, greedy, conniving, wart toad in the Oval Office is actually a prince interested in the welfare of the nation. Too many have been mesmerized to the point that they see (or at least won’t admit reality they do see) only some impossibly angelic aura instead of the vulgar, poison-tongued phony he really is. Even the fact that he admires Vladimir Putin and Kim Jon Un provides no clues for his worshipers to his ethos.
It’s as though we have become two separate nations residing in the same space at war with one another under a puppet master half the country sees as its savior. Both sides are self-righteous, but I believe the division is perhaps the worst since our Civil War (1861-1865). I am often terrified that the nation is becoming increasingly toxic or at least oblivious to the fact that the commander in chief is conning us and probably laughing about it while he watches Fox News every evening. There seems to be no middle ground left. I would love to support him, if he had even a shred of dignity, compassion, or ability to unite us in a time when we are more and more at odds, one side against the other…with no middle ground left. All we hear is the president screaming messages in parking lots and making insulting comments about anyone who doesn’t agree completely with him and worship him as the idol he believes himself to be in his delusional state of self-aggrandizement.
I pray daily that some middle ground can eventually be discovered where we, as a nation, can find some level of reason, compassion, compromise and justice again through someone who doesn’t see himself as some kind of Tsar, Emperor, or Fuhrer who believes fervently that the world belongs only to him and his immediate family. There has to be a better way through a better leader. JB
