Divided We Stand; the Death of Bipartisanship.

It started way back with Nixon and Watergate; it gained momentum during the Clinton years; it flirted with high speed and recklessness during the G.W. Bush Administrations; it reached a crescendo with Obama in the White House; and now it has reached the level of full blown idiocy. 

It has not only become acceptable to simply obstruct the opposing party and never offer anything in response; it has become expected to do so.  And not only are we seeing the two major political parties engaging in hyper-partisanship these days; the mainstream media has thrown aside any pretense of objectivity and gone full bore anti-Trump.  Clapper, Yates, Hillary, Perez, Schumer, Hollywood…all are in full-throated unison to block any initiative proposed by our President.  The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and others are now running fiction as fact, quoting unnamed sources with a multitude of axes to grind, misrepresenting facts when all those present at an event say otherwise, and running front page headlines based on memos they have never seen and which are partially and selectively read to them over the phone by…once again…unnamed sources.  The venom we see from late night television is bracing, even shocking on occasion.  The Judiciary has been politically weaponized, career government employees are choosing sides based on ideological agendas, and holdover employees from previous Administrations are now expected to be undercover agents leaking all manner of propaganda and sowing seeds of dissent at every opportunity. 

Bottom line: When surveying the political landscape of America and realizing that forty-plus percent of the nation sees Republicans as territorial Neanderthals, while forty-plus percent see Democrats as anarchic Socialists; it certainly seems that we have quite possibly gone down the rabbit hole, are in total free fall, and all hope of having any semblance of a bipartisan, functioning government has disappeared.    There is no statesman on either side…no group of patriots who are willing to compromise, sacrifice, or sincerely engage in anything less than total political warfare.  And make no mistake about it:  It is war.  Just as surely as each side hurling missiles and bombs at each other, Republicans and Democrats are fully engaged in a contest to totally destroy and rule over the other.

And while we turn our heads from the constant attack memes in the media, trying to find anything that is politics-free and not driven by political correctness; the elephant in the room is this simple question: What is next?  Now that every player is locked in to a position, now that each party is openly armed and armored, now that all the folks in journalism have thrown aside their standards and selected their side; what are the implications of this unmasked hostility for our nation? 

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The logical conclusion to be drawn from a fully polarized government is pretty simple: it is either total victory and dominance or total irrelevance and guerrilla warfare.  If Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, in league with the mainstream media and their other liberal friends, choose to continue their strategy of total opposition to anything Trumpian, then Republicans will have no other choice but to use the power available to the majority party to make the Democrats as irrelevant as possible.  The only logical alternative to this “crush or be crushed” mantra would be complete and total stalemate, gridlock, and spasms of legislative seizures; that status would be intolerable to either party in the long run.  The Democrats detonated the nuclear option on Presidential appointments.  The Republicans detonated the nuclear option on Supreme Court nominees.  The next nuclear device to drop will be targeted for simple cloture on routine legislative matters.  Once that threshold is crossed, we have entered into full blown political party autocracy.   And no matter which side of the political fence you stand on, that is not a good prescription for our nation.

If some type of miraculous wind doesn’t sweep across WDC and blow away the partisan seeds of destruction that are being sown, we are heading hell-bent towards a 2018 mid-term election that will set the course for our country either on a continued path of civics-centered chaos or will set the stage for a one-sided Republican transformation of government.   And if the latter turns out to be the case, it is simply a matter of time before the roles are reversed and we flip the script to a Democrat-authored government.  In politics, there are no truer words than “what comes around, goes around”.  Then, as our society and culture springs from one platform to another, the party that plays the minority role will inevitably become more obstinate, more disruptive, and more resentful for not having the pre-eminent position it inhabited not so long ago.  This is not a prescription for long-term success and well being; not a manner of existence that leads to a high quality of life for generation after generation. 

One must ponder the real likelihood that should our government continue to evolve in this fashion, will we not see our everyday lives trend in the same direction?  In so many respects, history has shown us that while it might not actually dictate specific behavior, our government sets an example that inevitably seeps downward into the way its citizens live, work, and play.  If you look around, you can now see that the “win at all costs and take no prisoners” mentality has permeated America.  We are badly fooling ourselves if we make the mistake of thinking that it cannot get any worse.

President Trump and the Democrats with their media allies remind me of a problem I have with my grandson…my six year old grandson.  On our occasional walks through the cattle pastures, I warn him to watch out for the fresh cow piles.  But like some kind of supernatural, organic magnetic force is at play, he’s attracted to the mess and will many times end up poking around with a stick or the toe of his boot.  He simply cannot resist the temptation.  The President and his perpetual critics have the same problem with each other that my grandson has with the cow manure; they simply cannot keep themselves from stirring it up and making it so much worse than they found it.  If there is to be any positive result from a Trump Administration, the President is going to have to talk less, speak softer, and learn to play with a winning hand.  The Democrats and the mainstream media need to crawl out of their sandboxes, shed their perpetual adolescence, realize that the election is over and was legit, and respectively assume their proper and necessary roles as the loyal (to their Country and Party principles) opposition Party and reporters (not Creators) of Facts (not Fiction).