Is the current conflict gripping the news media really the worst situation that has confronted the country? To hear the media's talking heads you would think so. But, all it takes is a little search back into history to realize that this country has almost been in a constant state of conflict and divided loyalties since it's beginning. About the only time we have been close to a totally unified nation in thought is during times of great conflict with a foreign power, i.e. WWII.
Just contemplate the beginning of the country. The Revolutionary War was not fought because we had acrimonious relations between those who wanted to remain loyal to the British crown, the Tories, and those that wanted American independence. The country was deeply divided and were killing each other over that issue.
It wasn't long after the Revolution that the British incensed the President, Madison, so much that he was moved to ask the congress to declare war against them. But, the country was deeply divided over that decision. It became known in America as the War of 1812.
From Wikipedia: I don't mind plagiarizing.
Opposition to the War of 1812 was widespread in the United States, especially in New England. Many New Englanders opposed the conflict on political, economic, and religious grounds. When the Embargo Act of 1807 failed to remedy the situation with the United Kingdom, with Britain refusing to rescind the Orders in Council (1807) and the French continuing their decrees, certain Democratic-Republicans known as war hawks felt compelled to persuade the United States government to declare war on the British. A number of contemporaries called it, "The second war for independence." Henry Clay and John Calhoun pushed a declaration of war through Congress, stressing the need to uphold American honor and independence. Speaking of the impact of the depressed cotton trade upon his fellow Southerners, Calhoun told Congress that:
- They see, in the low price of their produce, the hand of foreign injustice; they know well without the market to the continent, the deep and steady current of supply will glut that of Great Britain; they are not prepared for the colonial state to which again that Power [Great Britain] is endeavoring to reduce us. The manly spirit of that section of our country will not submit to be regulated by any foreign Power.
Vehement protests against "Mr. Madison's War" erupted in those parts of the country where the opposition party, the Federalists, held sway, especially in Connecticut and Massachusetts. The governors of these two states, along with Rhode Island, refused to place their state militias under federal control for duty outside the territory of their respective states. In the ensuing 1812 and 1813 United States House of Representatives elections, some members of Congress who voted for the war paid the price. Eight sitting New England congressmen were rejected by the voters, and several others saw the writing on the wall and declined to seek re-election. There was a complete turnover of the New Hampshire delegation.
The conflict over the question of slavery, a continual conflict until the Civil War settled it, and it's expansion was never more evident than the sentiments surrounding the Mexican-American War.
Again, a plagiarism from Wikipedia:
Opposition to the war
In the United States, increasingly divided by sectional rivalry, the war was a partisan issue and an essential element in the origins of the American Civil War. Most Whigs in the North and South opposed it; most Democrats supported it. Southern Democrats, animated by a popular belief in Manifest Destiny, supported it in hope of adding slave-owning territory to the South and avoiding being outnumbered by the faster-growing North. John L. O'Sullivan, editor of the Democratic Review, coined this phrase in its context, stating that it must be "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
Now we come to the greatest conflict that happened on American soil since the Revolution. The American war between the states, otherwise known as the Civil War. The conflict of opinions about two major issues drove the people to kill each other by the hundreds of thousands. One was overriding the issue of slavery and the other one of the sovereignty of the individual states and their right to succeed from the union. The conclusion of that war is well known and it's aftermath existed in large measure until the civil rights movement in the 50's and even beyond.
Following the Civil War the southern states enacted a whole series of laws and other restrictions to prevent blacks from participating in the political process or even to gain a little prosperity. If you think that the black population enjoyed that status you haven't been aware of history. From the end of the Civil War for the next hundred years the arguments over the rights of non-white citizens was continually a source of conflict. Lynchings, rapes, murder and beatings were common to the southern blacks during this time, largely out of the sight of middle class white Americans.
Then came the Great War. The War To End All
Wars. Otherwise known as World War One.
There was significant opposition to that war among the American people, especially in the beginning. The Hearst news syndicate pushed for the war with every means at their disposal and was instrumental in turning a great number of people's minds. However, there was still opposition to the war after our entry into it. Draconian measures were instituted to silence that opposition.
Many countries jailed those who spoke out against the conflict. These included Eugene Debs in the United States and Bertrand Russell in Britain. In the US, the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 made it a federal crime to oppose military recruitment or make any statements deemed "disloyal". Publications at all critical of the government were removed from circulation by postal censors, and many served long prison sentences for statements of fact deemed unpatriotic.
Of course that war had major consequences in much of the world. The only major country Monarchy left standing after that war was that of Britain. Germany, Austria and Russia all fell to the consequences of that war.
Leading up to World War II the mood of the country was clearly antiwar. There were rallies and marches to support that desire. Lindbergh was an outspoken antiwar advocate. Of course all that came to an end with Pearl Harbor. That brought the country together like no time in history. One goal, to win that war.
Now comes the rise of of what has been tagged the radical left. This group calls themselves liberals, but they are far from classic liberalism. To the classic liberal the foundation of free speech, exercise of one's religion, and a free unbiased press are bedrocks of their belief system. The classical liberal would defend the right enunciated by Hamilton who said "I might not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it".
On the contrary they have infiltrated our schools, especially our universities, and have preached the virtue of socialism and determined that anyone not getting on board is to be silenced. They have taken that mandate to heart. While socialists are invited to speak on campus, conservatives are shouted down if they try to speak, but mostly they aren't invited.
The political landscape in Washington ever since the end of World War II has been decidedly globalist. We have negotiated trade agreements with foreign nations much to our detriment. We almost single handed built China into a global super power and an unrelenting enemy. We have exported our technology to them and imported their goods in huge amounts. Almost every thing you use, wear or come in contact with is made in China. We firmly believed that all that was important was trade and importing goods at the best possible price. In the process we have run up a huge trade deficit with China. While American companies are not allowed to build in China without controlling interest being Chinese, they can and do build and buy American real estate at will. In addition the subject of the environment has become central to the thinking of the left wing. Oil was to be phased out, coal mines and factories closed, all in the name of the environment. As result we exported vast number of American jobs overseas and created what has become known as the rust belt in the USA. We abandoned the core citizen that built this country, the blue collar working class. We closed the coal mines and prevented the country from drilling for oil or even harvesting the oil that we knew was there. We allowed immigrants to cross the border and fill the low paying jobs that at one time would have been filled as the entry jobs for young citizens. Of course with the flood of immigrants across our borders came criminals, drugs and other bad things.
Then along came Trump. He tapped into the frustration of the forgotten masses and vowed to bring the jobs back to America. He vowed to close the borders to illegals, bring manufacturing back to the country, open the oil fields and coal mines and strengthen our military. He preached America first. He vowed to renegotiate trade agreements that favored foreign counties and make the members of NATO pay the share of expenses that the agreement said they should. NATO was almost completely funded by the USA. The only problem was that Trump has an abrasive personality and rubs a lot of people the wrong way, especially the elite in Washington.
Of course what Trump was preaching was heresy to the left. He was a real danger to everything they had invested in. The high tech companies of Silicon Valley, the big retailers, academia and of course the Hollywood crowd lined up against him. So, they went after him in a big way. He was elected as President and that just ramped up the opposition to him and his programs.
He then presided over one of the greatest economic booms in the history of our country. He got tax cuts and took a machete to regulations that were hampering industrial growth. Unemployment fell to all time lows, especially among blacks and other minorities. The stock market was at 19000 when he took office and now it has surpassed 30000 just four years later.
The left dominates the media and the civil service in Washington, including the Justice Department. That is not surprising considering that they have unionized and negotiated fat salary, benefits and retirement packages for themselves. They don't want that to end. They like the power they have in Washington.
The top FBI and DPJ officials made it their priority to get rid of him starting during the campaign and following through into his Presidency. They went after him with trumped up charges and allegations with no evidence in support. A document generated by the Clinton campaign was used as a pretext to get a FISA warrant for phone tapping and other surveillance against Trump and his associates. A special commission was formed and spent millions of dollars and over a year of time trying to find some crime in the election that Trump had committed. They found none. The Democrat run house went so far as to pass articles of impeachment, based on nothing more than they didn't like him. He underwent 4 years of opposition from almost all the media including the NY Times, CNN, MSNBC and all the social media platforms. The state of NY opened it's own investigation hoping to find something to charge him with. They went after his income tax records hoping to find fraud or something to get him with.
During this time several actual and perceived incidents happened concerning police exerting excessive force against blacks including murder. Some were legitimate, some were not. Trump was a strong backer of law enforcement and did not immediately jump on the band wagon and condemn the whole police force for the actions of a few. He fought back against the defund the police movement that started to rise. A rift between the police and the black and liberal community widened to new heights.
Ant-police and Anti Trump protests sprung up in cities that were run by Democrats that turned violent. Stores were burned and looted. Police were attacked and even killed. The Democratic Mayors of these large cities did nothing about it. Declaring that this was all Trump's fault. The mainstream media downplayed the violence and pronounced that the protests were peaceful and that any violence was the fault of the police or Trump or both. And, the protests were justified, even the small amount of violence because Trump and the police were such a bad guys.
His millions of supporters saw what was going on. They aren't stupid. Trump lashed out at the news media and the Democrat Mayors and Governors because of their bias. He sent federal officers in to prevent damage to federal property and was severely criticized by the media for creating a police state. So a divide started in the country. On one side were the Globalist left dominated Democrats and even a few Republicans and on the other side the blue collar Populist Trump supporters.
Trump attacked the press calling them fake news organizations, which really wasn't very smart, whether true of not. That made the media even more determined to get rid of him. He had a bad habit of not letting anything pass that he perceived as an insult. He lashed out on Twitter and in person. He wasn't bashful about hurling insults at any body who displeased him. He dominated the news cycle, especially those of cable news. He also was not always as fully truthful as he might have been, that led to the charges of lying by the media, who fact checked every statement he made and made much of any exaggeration or misstatement.
The hostility between Trump, his supporters and the anti-Trump folks became bitter. Trump supporters were hounded out of their jobs, harassed on the streets and attacked by the supporters of the left. Little of this was reported on CNN or the NY Times, so the general public knew little about. All this in spite of the fact that Trump supporters constitute about one half of the country. But, the main stream media and many members of congress called his supporters racists, ignorant and uneducated, even traitors and treasonous, and they should listen to their betters, i.e. the intellectuals about how to think. After all the halls of academia are filled with the brightest minds in the world. Of course those bright boys never held a real job, never had to build a thing, never ran a business and had no experience out in the real world. Academia is the most isolated group you can imagine.
From the beginning of the election cycle 2020 Trump said that the Democrat machine will try to steal the election. Given his history with the Dems and Washington who can blame him for thinking that. During the counting of the votes after the election there were numerous instances of ballot manipulation and other verifiable suspicious events. Mysterious ballots showing up, Republican monitors not allowed in the room while Democrats were. Dead people voting, no signature verification, counting unsigned ballots and on and on the process went. But, nothing happened that would stand the test of the legal system. Although suspicious things were clearly happening, there was no legal proof of fraud. So the courts threw the cases out and Dems rejoiced. They alleged that it is proven that there was no fraud.
Trump, I think, really lost his mind at this point. He saw that the election results were not going to be reversed in spite of spending huge amount of money on lawyers and challenges in the courts. Cases he was never going to win. He started to make statements that are construed by the media and the Dems to be inflammatory and resulted in a raid on the capitol to halt the certification by congress of the election of Biden as President. Trump was mad. He was certain that the election had been stolen and he reacted like he always did when opposed. He lashed out. He could have played it cool and thought about 2024. But, now he has given the Democratic controlled congress an excuse to impeach him once again. If the impeachment stands in the Senate, a good chance it might, then he would be barred from ever running for office again. That doesn't mean he will retire quietly to his golf course and real estate. He will continue to have a large following, so it isn't clear what role he will play in the future.
Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and the other social media have all taken steps to silence any voice from the right. Where this is going it isn't clear. Perhaps the courts or congress will step in and do something. We'll see.
Yes we have deeply divided country.
