Tolerance and Our Discontents

There was a buzz phrase among Leftists in the late Sixties:  The Personal is Political.  I have always found that an alarming statement because it elevates political issues far above their proper sphere in our lives.  When politics has become the center of their lives for a critical mass of people in our history, huge violence has often resulted.  This occurred with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and, to a much lesser extent, with the domestic unrest in the late Sixties of the last century.  The US, however, has usually avoided mass bloodletting due to our mechanism of elections.  Differences are to be resolved at the ballot box has usually been a prime article of faith among Americans.  The way in which American elections have a certain pendulum nature, with political power swinging between two dominant powers, has usually ensured a pressure valve for resentment and also has given most sides in the great political issues of the day a stake in maintaining the system.  This system is beginning to break down.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016, and the Resistance Movement to him, is an ominous development in our political culture.  Now, all Presidents have encountered opposition to a greater or lesser extent, a feature of our system that is normal,healthy and predictable.  What is not normal, however, is the view of almost the entire Left that Donald Trump, and Republicans and conservatives in general, are somehow illegitimate;  that when the adversaries of the Left attain political power it somehow doesn’t count.  This, in and of itself, might not be as dangerous as it is, but for the Left’s success in capturing most of the media, academia, entertainment, big business and, increasingly, the churches.  The tech, in all but name monopolies, companies, like Twitter, Facebook and Google, are also controlled by the Left, and increasingly seek to smother conservative voices.  Thus we have a Left that views their adversaries as evil and illegitimate, with their message trumpeted every day by the sources of mass communication and mass influence they control.  It frustrates many on the Left that with all the levers of power they control, their adversaries still win elections and are currently politically dominant nationally and in most of the states.

Conservatives, on the other hand, often feel beleaguered and that they are participating in a game which is rigged against them. They hate the mocking of what they hold dear in much of entertainment, the twisting of the news against their views in much of the media and the indoctrination their kids endure in both higher education, and, increasingly, throughout all of education.  The weaponization of the IRS and other Federal agencies during the Obama administration, and the attempt by forces within the FBI to take down Trump, have given conservatives all too much support for the conviction that their most cherished beliefs are under continual assault.  The Kavanaugh debacle has revealed to all conservatives, with eyes to see and ears to hear, the lengths that the Left will go to destroy a brilliant man with a pristine record, and his family, if that is what it takes to fight the battle of politics.  When families are regarded as legitimate targets in politics, we are on the cusp of leaving the realm of politics for the realm of war.

Politics is a pursuit that most normal Americans, wisely, have attempted to ignore throughout our history, in preference to being concerned with family and other private matters of greater concern to them.  The Left is increasingly making this stance harder and harder, if not impossible, to maintain.  This will not end well.