Fighting It Out

AMERICAN CULTURE can be fairly described as a civil war in slow motion, an incessant torrent of vitriolic discourse, punctuated by mass murders, law suits, and legislative machinations laden with rhetorical outbursts of slanderous accusations. Throughout the Obama presidency, Donald J. Trump falsely claimed that Obama was born in Kenya, blatant misinformation and racism which trump's supporters either ignored or approved. Obama's haters substantiated few Obama lies, yet constantly accused him of lying, when in fact the alleged lies were mere disagreements. Its all a matter of definition, of perspective, exactly what constitutes a "lie". Trump later quietly admitted as much. The number of verified lies trump has told while president is now approaching ten thousand; his supports have highly selective discernment. Our mass murders and disinformation are disproportionately the product of the extreme right wing, as it struggles to keep its outdated boat afloat in a rapidly changing world. Desperate to change the subject, they label Hillary Clinton "crooked", and scream "lock her up", despite the absence of any hard evidence of criminality or corruption on her part, nor a single conviction for any crime, large or small. We can take some measure of dark comfort from looking beyond hagiographic right wing historical disinformation, and viewing American history in its naked ugliness. it is a litany of violent national division. Rancorous political parties emerged in the seventeen nineties, despite the best intentions and wishes of the new nation's architects. The election of 1800 was an archetype for al future presidential contests; rancorous, contentious, controversial, corrupt, with disputable results. Sixty years later, the pervasive hatred of Abraham Lincoln, and the mass slaughter of the Civil War exemplified the violently divisive nature of American history beyond the merest need for detailed elucidation. When I was a child the country was torn apart by the national disagreement over the Viet Nam War, and by segregation, the legacy of slavery. I took sides. I took the side of the hippie war protestors and the black rioters, in secret, of course. I still do, no longer in secret. When president bush enticed Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1991, then feigned outrage, I finally my first opportunity to overtly protest an unjust American war of aggression. In retrospect, the hippies, the black urban rioters, and the protestors against the was in Iraq were, as we like to say, on the right side of history. There will come a time when in retrospect the republican party, the Christian conservative movement, the climate change deniers, are recognized as being as wrong as the confederacy, or the Viet Nam War hawks. I'm always careful to choose the eventual winning side.