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On his victory speech of November 7, Joe Biden pledged to be a president who does not seek to divide but to unify and who doesn’t see red and blue states, but a United States. He insisted that we must “give each other a chance”, put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see and listen to each other, and “stop treating our opponents as our enemy.”
Of course, the entire industrialized press echoed Biden’s call about how “we are not enemies. We are Americans,” with gleaming headlines proclaiming that it’s time to heal. I wish it were so simple. I wish it were true. I doubt it.
If he wins, we’ll see whether that talk of unity was genuine
For starters, the courts have yet to make a call about the arguments put forward by the Trump campaign, and so Biden’s proverbial soup could still fall on the way from the plate to his mouth. However, even if he wins the election, Joseph Robinette Biden’s call is not nearly enough to heal the wound that (mostly) the Democrats have caused on the American community.
The fact is that for the “elites” of the big cities on the shores of the United States, the rest of their compatriots are either undesirable peasants or minorities condemned forevermore to thank the “generosity” of the liberals. For them, from the vantage point of the great universities and the tall skyscrapers, North American society seems to be divided into two great segments: that of the conservatives, whom they despise, and that of the minorities who feel they have the right to control.
Come on, even Biden himself said that if African Americans weren’t sure about voting for him, it was because they were not African Americans. And the left-wing press has launched similar accusations against LGBT people who reveal their sympathies for the Republican Party.
Deep down – and this is the scary part – for many of those inside the left’s bubble, conservative voters and sympathizers constitute a group unworthy of attention or respect. Many liberals systematically deny right-wingers a seat at the table, and when circumstances compel them to recognize that, in fact, there is an America outside of the “values” of globalist liberalism, the spokesmen on the left simply charge their opponents with accusations of racism, xenophobia, homophobia or some other phobia of the month, as a pretext to justify that they no longer even bother to refute them at the level of arguments.
There is no common ground
Here’s a snapshot: on November 14, the LA Times assigned their letters section to Donald Trump’s supporters, in an effort to listen to them, understand what motivated them to support the Republican candidate in the past election, and (perhaps) slightly balance the newspaper’s overwhelmingly pro-democratic coverage.
The letters were brief and relatively mild. In more sensible times, the exercise of the LA Times would not have caused any scandal. However, the leftist bubble has become so used to not listening to others that they considered it treason for the newspaper to give a space, however small, to Trump’s supporters.
Twitter, in particular, was outraged. Both anonymous and “verified” accounts jumped voraciously against Sewell Chan, (the editor of the opinion section), to the tune of “why a full page? Or “There’s no common ground to be had,” while dozens of users threatened to cancel their subscription to the newspaper.
And no, it doesn’t just happen on the internet. Just last weekend, the radical left’s response to the presence of Trump supporters in Washington D.C. was way worse than that of a mean tweet. In dozens of recorded incidents, “activists” of “Antifa” and “Black Lives Matter” insulted, spat, and beat up those they detected as sympathizers of President Trump.
That day the violence reached openly surreal heights, like that of a group of white men insulting an African American woman. That event would have been national news for six months, including a Netflix film, if not because the whites in question were members of “Antifa” and the African American was a supporter of Donald Trump. The big press was silent because deep down, both the violent “Antifa” and the well-behaved liberals on TV believe that Trump’s supporters “deserve it.”
Deplorables
Indeed, not all liberals or leftists devote themselves to hitting conservatives in the middle of the street. Still, they do share that deep contempt for those whom they consider, in the words of Hillary Clinton, a “basket of deplorables,” and this did not start with Donald Trump. It is essential to clarify this point: it is not that the liberal left despises its conservative compatriots because they supported Trump. The problem comes from long before.
That contempt goes way back. It creeps in on more or less subtle ways: when the mainstream media portrays rural Americans as either fools or fanatics, when they present religious people as hypocrites, and of course, it shows in the seemingly endless comments about how uncomfortable it is for the big-city liberals to share Thanksgiving with their fool or wicked “conservative uncle.”
This phenomenon began at least since the seventies (Ben Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda has some sound evidence about it), but it has intensified since 2000. By 2020 it has consolidated into what we know as “cancellation culture,” which basically consists of praising diversity in the discourse but punishing it furiously when it dares to exist in the real world. So, you can be of whatever color or gender you like… as long as you obey.
Here’s a final example: Even back in 2006, CNN Headline News had a program with Glenn Beck. Nowadays, that would be unthinkable; there would be boycotts, hashtags, and resignations. Why? Because the left has locked itself in a bubble and decided that conservatives and Republicans (that is, half the country) are foolish & deplorable, and therefore they must be canceled or reeducated.
So, if Biden wants to “heal” America, he would have to begin by investing his political capital in reverting the totalitarian degradation growing within his own supporters.
Will he? Maybe, but -as of now- count me among the skeptics.
Gerardo Garibay Camarena, is a doctor of law, writer and political analyst with experience in the public and private sectors. His new book is "How to Play Chess Without Craps: A Guide to Reading Politics and Understanding Politicians" // Gerardo Garibay Camarena es doctor en derecho, escritor y analista político con experiencia en el sector público y privado. Su nuevo libro es “Cómo jugar al ajedrez Sin dados: Una guía para leer la política y entender a los políticos”
I don’t believe Democrats always lies