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| Something I thought I would never see: Bahrain and the UAE at the Kotel (VIN) |
But the pandemic is not the only thing plaguing the nation. What troubles me most after that is how politically divided the country is now. And maybe even more than that, how the media treats the two sides.
This is not to say there is no merit to their reporting. But there is an unprecedented level of bias that I would have never dreamed possible. And yet is happening before my very eyes on almost a daily basis.
For me, that translates in being fed one big lie under the guise of truth. Which is that only one side of the political divide has any merit at all. Or better put - has all the merit. While the other side is seen as – not only meritless but deplorable.
Lest anyone think I am exaggerating, remember that the 2016 candidate for the highest office in the land actually referred to them that way. Even though she later apologized she obviously had spoken her mind regretting only that she made her thoughts public. And the media has done little to alter that perception obviously believes the same thing.
I see it all the time. I have yet to see anything but fawning admiration for every word coming out of the President-elect’s mouth. But when they talk abut the President they focus almost exclusively on every negative thing about him they can.
It is true that the President gives them a lot of material to work with. But it just so happens that he has done a lot of good things for the country too. Even for the world. But you would never know that since the media rarely talks about those things and minimizes or spins them negatively when they do.
The President’s tweets are not the sum and substance of the Trump administration. I would even argue that they have little to do with them. As a wise man once said, ‘Don’t look at what I say.’ ‘Look at what I do.’
Minimizing his accomplishments makes them look irrelevant and hardly worth mentioning. It is far more important to make him look bad by over-focusing on the bad.
If he is so deplorable, then so too must be his supporters. How can anyone support a man that is almost purely evil and not be considered deplorable themselves? They don’t need to say it explicitly. But the implications are all there by the way they report about them.
What, one may ask, has the President done that is so great? There is one thing that even the left is giving him credit for (albeit grudgingly). It his sea change approach to the Arab Israeli conflict. Which has borne the unprecedented fruit of making peace between Israel and Arab nations that - until Trump swore they would never even talk to Israel let alone sign a peace treaty with them. At least not until the Palestinian issue was resolved. That was the conventional wisdom of just about all the so-called experts that worked for decades trying to achieve peace. At which they failed miserably.
As noted in Ha’aretz (which is about as anti Trump as any media publication can be) Trump has proven them all wrong. As he has all of those that laughed at his Middle East point man, son in law Jared Kushner, as lacking the experience and intelligence to pull anything like this off. They are probably are still in denial about Kushner’s part in this even though everyone involved or that has been informed about all the details (including some Democrats) have given him a large part of the credit for achieving this game changing milestone.
Where has the media been with all this? Sure they reported it. But it was practically incidental to the rest of their coverage of the President which was and is all negative all the time.
Back to the political divide. The media chooses to portray Trump supporters as members or sympathizers with hate groups; the religious right whom they practically include in that group, the elderly whose values have gone out of style; or in most cases uninformed, uneducated, selfish boobs incapable of understanding why he is so bad and look only at what’s in it for them. Whenever the media interviews someone to their left, it is almost always a well spoken polished member of academia or the like. Whenever they interview someone from the right, they find the stupidest looking and sounding person they can making it seem like all Trump supporters are like that.
Not that I am letting all of the Trump supporters off the hook. I am flabbergasted by the number of Trump supporters that believe the election was a fraud and that to them Biden will be an illegitimate President. I am flabbergasted at the huge pro Trump rallies that are still taking place even now after the electors gave the election to Biden.
I wish I could say I am surprised that the President feels this way. But I am not. However, that so many of his followers do perplexes and troubles me. To say this is unprecedented is an understatement and frankly even scares me! Hard to believe it is happening even as I see it with my own eyes! I cannot believe how many otherwise sane intelligent people have told me they agree with the President.
What in the heck is the matter with them?! Sure... I get that they loved his policies. I did too. Most of them anyway. I even get that they loved his combative antiestablishment style. But he lost. I just don’t get why they continue to deny it.
Why is the political divide is so extreme? I have said it before. While the President may be at fault for exacerbating the enmity between the two sides, it was there long before he became President. The liberal ‘left’ side has been moving with increasing speed ever more leftward. Helped along by a Supreme Court that made some key decisions in their direction (e.g. legalizing gay marriage as the law of the land). The conservative ‘right’ on the other hand has had their values increasing challeneged by those same decisions.
Which is why they support a President whose character and behavior is the exact opposite of the values they believe in. They support the man whose decisions they believe protect and advance their values. And because of opposition to the values supported and advanced by the left who voted for his opponent. Values that are anathema to them..
Liberals on the other hand see the decisions Trump made and supported by the right as anathema to their values. That - and his legitimately deplorable character makes them about as anti Trump and anti his supporters as could be.
My hope is that Biden will accomplish the unity he seeks. He said he wants to be the President of United States. Democrats AND Republicans. Not just the President of the Democrats. That is wonderful. But unless he adjusts some of the policies he has promised to implement, what he really means is that he hopes Republicans will become Democrats.
If Biden really wants unity, he will have to compromise and agree to some of the Republican agenda. It is also my hope that he changes course away from the direction Obama was headed in the Middle East and sees the wisdom of the successful direction Trump has been taking. If he accomplishes all that, I might actually support him in the next election. (If he runs.) But I am not going to hold my breath.
