Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Could “Calexit” Create a Left-Right Confederacy?

 

“Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” The 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump produced the wedding of Bible Belt social conservatives and a flamboyant New York Billionaire with a legitimately questionable history of less than “Christian” moral social values. But the wedding of these “strange bedfellows” appears to be working out quite well—at least for the time being. As presidential politics swing from the extreme left (Obama) to the extreme right (Trump), each political camp begins to make a similar complaint—a complaint about what each camp (left or right) views as a deliberate encroachment upon their basic rights as Americans.  Conservative and/or Tea Party types on the right or progressives and/or Resistance types on the left both have similar complaints. When “their” party is out of power, they both view the incumbent President to be the very essence of evil.

They view the incumbent as an immediate and dangerous threat to their concept of “their” country. Today, while liberals/progressives are vocally and at times violently denouncing Trump’s contemporary America—Conservatives can recall how Obama would declare: “That’s not who we are!” while thinking to ourselves: “You (Obama) do not represent who we are!” Under the Trump Administration, the left is leading the fight against the power of the White House. During the Obama Administration, the right was fighting the power of the White House—hampered, of course, by establishment Republicans whose primary goal was to stay in office while maintaining the status-quo that provides the establishment types (Democrats and Republicans) with immense power, perks, and privileges.

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