By Matt Rooney
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I’m a big fan of owning up to reality particularly when people are getting hysterical, Save Jerseyans.
Here it is: this narrative that America’s political balkanization began with Donald Trump is patently absurd.
I wasn’t born yesterday.
Neither were you.
The ‘mail bomber’ saga is inducing a lot of people on the Left to make some pretty reckless allegations against President Donald Trump, his supporters, and their alleged role in ‘instigating violence.’ Of course they weren’t worked up when Ted Cruz and his wife was being chased out of a restaurant! And they certainly weren’t urging more responsible rhetoric after the shooting of Rep. Steve Scaliese. Incidents like those don’t fit the narrative.
But I’m not interested in a tit-for-tat argument. I prefer historical analysis. Let’s run through the list of how we got to here which is in approximate (not exact) chronological order. And it hardly needs to be said BUT I will anyway: this is only a partial list…
- Gerrymandering
- Identify politics
- “Republicans hate poor people!”
- Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’
- Political Correctness and the criminalization of speech
- The dawn of the 24/7 news channels
- Bork’s SCOTUS nomination
- Clarence Thomas’s nomination
- The Internet! And all of its nightmare fuel.
- Clinton Impeachment
- The “bias business model” at newspapers
- MoveOn.org
- 2000 Election
- “Bush is Hitler!”
- Terri Schiavo
- “George Bush hates black people!”
- Social media and political blogging
- Super PACs
- “Bitter clingers”
- Obamacare battle
The list goes on, and on, and on. I warned you!
The takeaway: No, my friends, to quote the great Billy Joel, President Donald Trump “didn’t start the fire.“ (h/t to some FB friends for the lyrical assist – it fits perfectly).
America started walking down this road a long, long time ago
Blame Trump for making it worse if you want? I guess? But that doesn’t make you any less wrong/ignorant/unhelpful for ignoring the past few decades of run-up.
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