Politics in the United States has always been divisive. There have always been bare knuckle brawling in the quest for power. But the ability for politicians to appeal quickly to large numbers of people via social media and the ability of ordinary people to spread their own views the same way has had the result making politics more of an us vs. them contest than ever before. Elected officials are not rewarded for striving for consensus or compromising with the other party, rather they are voted out of office, even by "primaried" if they don't exhibit enough doctrinal purity.
It's hypocritical at the very least for Republicans like Sen. Scott, or indeed any Republican, to take offense at a Democrat like President Biden making statements like "MAGA Republicans are semi-fascists" or that white supremacy is the nation's greatest threat while Democrats and the voters who support their policies are tarred as Marxists, pedophiles, evil and are intentionally out to ruin our nation, not to mention the personal attacks claiming that Biden is suffering from Alzheimer's and is nothing but a puppet of the "radical left wing" of the Democratic Party.
President Biden campaigned in part on being a unifying figure, who, based on his decades of Senate experience, could work with the Republicans in Congress to "get things done". I'm on the record as branding him naïve to think so. As far as I can tell no Republican in Congress is interested in consensus or compromise or in uniting the country, their idea of unity is for everyone to fall in line behind their agenda. The Democratic members of Congress are not as bad, having a record of meeting Republican presidents (even the last one) halfway, but the intransigence of their Republican colleagues has hardened them as well.
I'm not optimistic that any candidate can be a unifying figure; anyone believing that they can be that person is deluding themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment