Political Hysteria and the Division of America

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Darrell Castle talks about how the lack of civility in politics is dividing Americans and preventing real debate and discourse, as well as causing the potential for violence.

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POLITICAL HYSTERIA AND THE DIVISION OF AMERICA

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report.  Today is Friday, July 6, 2018, and on today’s Report I will be talking about how politics in America has been reduced to hysteria, which is continuing to widen the division between Americans.

To illustrate my point I will start with a front page story from my home town Memphis Commercial Appeal  newspaper, which ran on the 4^th of July.  The chairman of the Shelby County Democrat Party referred to local Republican nominees as “demonstrably racist, homophobic, unethical and unqualified.”   It seems that the chairman did not get his way on an issue of importance to him and his party in the upcoming election and he reacted, not with debate and discourse, but with name calling.  The issue that he was concerned about seems to me to be just political tactics.  Why should Republicans help his party get more of his voters to the polls?   Instead of seeing it that way, his reaction was to throw out the dreaded “R” word.

The Tennessee Republican chairman, of course, called on the Democrat Party to condemn his “name-calling and outright lies”, but the Democrats refused and doubled down as they usually do.  If I were speaking for the Constitution Party against such an attack I would take a different approach by thanking the gentleman for his honesty.  That is a rare quality in politics these days, and his honesty gives us a chance to see who and what he really is, and it motivates us for the battle ahead, so thanks again.

Anger, emotion, and spin rule the day in politics.  Just inspire the mob to show up at the polls, even if you have to use emotional manipulation to do so.  If you disagree with me I will express self-righteous hatred, and rage, and call you a fascist or a Nazi.  Both left and right seem to believe that America is hanging in the balance ready to fall with each issue that confronts us and only they can save us.

We don’t all read, watch, or listen to the same media anymore, a trend that is exacerbated by social media allowing us to be completely isolated from any opposing views.  This creates a sense of despair about politics and society in general, as well as a belief that opponents aren’t just wrong, they are trying to destroy all that we hold dear.

The left is currently out of power and appears to be losing the fight.  They broadcast constantly to the mob in an effort to get them to the polls.  Don’t bother trying; you can’t get ahead because the system is stacked against you because of your race, gender, sexual preference, etc.

The mob is prone to violence more and more, and to calm the mob voices of rational leadership need to be heard.  To their credit, both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer rebuked Maxine Waters for her calls for harassment and violence against officials of the Trump administration.  Nancy Pelosi tweeted a mild, “it was unacceptable”, comment, which is really a private way of rebuking a very public statement.  Chuck Schumer, on the other hand, went on the floor of the Senate and referred to such language as un-American.  Both of them then went on to say that it was all Trump’s fault.

The left sees that it is losing and there are no legitimate issues left for them to campaign on.  Therefore we are all racists, white supremacists, homophobic, and practically, if not actually, members of the Klan.  Did you know that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center there are only about 6,500 members of the Klan left in America?  Well that’s true and you know if SPLC says it’s true then it is.  But we are constantly told that racism is epidemic and that all light, purity, and morality flow out of the Democrat Party into the hearts and souls of Americans.  Conversation and discourse are shut down and debate is impossible as name calling and calls for violence become the order of the day.

Things are happening in the world of left-wing politics that even those on the left can’t figure.  The left won on free speech in the 60’s but now they only seem to want speech to be free if they agree with it.  All opposing voices should be shut down.   For example, the New York Times, on the front page of last Sunday’s edition carried an article entitled, “How Free Speech was Weaponized by Conservatives”.  Even if true, I would argue that weaponizing free speech is a lot better than weaponizing the IRS, FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, and the rest of the Intelligence Establishment, as the Obama Administration did.

What the free speech argument means is that the left recognizes that if everyone gets to speak their mind the left will lose, so they want the rules of the game changed so that the right to speak freely is curbed except for them.  We’ll see if that approach continues to be successful.

How could conservatives have weaponized a freedom?  According to the greatest news organization in history, The New York Times, they did it by borrowing and building on arguments developed by liberals.  Well, as I said, the left won on free speech in the 60’s, and now they want to deny it to the rest of us.

We used to indoctrinate school children with the concept that in America you could go as far as brains and hard work could take you.  The concept was that anyone could grow up to be president, and when that was proven to be true, the left changed the narrative to one of resentment of success because you must have stolen it from someone else.  Life is inherently unfair but the left seems to want equality at the finish line, not just at the start.  If that is your goal, you will end up with a very slow, lowest common denominator race.

I understand that life is really fair in Venezuela right now.  That country has equality at the finish line.  Everyone is in hell and that’s equality of outcome.  It must be really hard for some of those more outspoken people on the left to admit that now, right now, we live in the greatest time in history, and this is the greatest civilization in the history of the world.  Advances in medicine, sanitation, technology, and opportunity make this the greatest time and place, and often I wonder where else in this world could you do better.  If the answer is nowhere, then can’t you say one positive thing, and if there is a better place, why not move there?

 Whatever gains are made, it’s not enough, because there can never be enough to satisfy the relentless demands of those who must have their way.  It is a relentless but incremental assault on everything individual in favor of the all-powerful collective.  The goal is apparently to gain control of the mechanisms of power so that they can be used to take income and decision-making ability from those who now possess it.  They control the media, and therefore, what is currently reported as news.  It is hard to find actual news now, because most of what is disguised as news is really entertainment and reality TV disguised as news

They parade their experts in front of us to tell us what is right and wrong, but often these people are not commenting on what their expertise really is.  A good example would be Bill Nye the Science Guy, who has an engineering background but actually, for the most part, comments on climate change.  No one ever asks about the obvious inconsistencies in what the experts say and do.  If we don’t cede our liberty to the federal government we are doomed because of climate change.  They all seem to know what the weather will be 50 or even 100 years from now.  Al Gore wants industrial society dismantled so he flies around the world in his private jet talking about it and he lives in a palatial mansion with a two million dollar hot tub.  It’s like the old doomsday cults used to be in predicting the end of the world but when the date of the end comes and goes, it’s pretty embarrassing for the cult.  It’s not embarrassing for the left though because they just move doomsday forward and start the count over.

You must serve the narrative of the left though, whether you are an expert or not.  As long as you serve the narrative you will be tolerated and pushed to the front, but if you violate it in the slightest you are persona non grata.  TV makes the audience see whatever person is on the screen as an expert. If it’s on TV, it must be true, so control of that medium is pretty important.

The friends of the left in Hollywood busy themselves patting each other on the back and giving each other awards.  If something gives them an opportunity they go on-screen and sniffle.  They live in mansions in Manhattan, D.C., and L.A., and don’t know or care much about Tennessee, Kentucky, or Kansas, and the middle class Americans who live there.

Finally folks, this podcast started out as a report on lack of civility in discourse of politics today and how that divides us, and it finished as an attack on the unreasonable demands of the left and the tendency of those on the left to blame everyone except themselves for their problems.

Hysteria is associated with dependency and that means dependency on the state. It’s like a drug, the more you get the more you want.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle,

Thanks for listening.