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01.11.2017 7

Editorial: America’s reality divide

The dying throes of the Obama Administration have exposed the real challenge in America — we don’t know the same things to be true.  And it isn’t because of the latest fad of the left, so-called “fake” news, but instead due to the information flows that we choose to read, view or listen to and the editorial choices they make.

How else can one explain President Barack Obama stating on Nov. 20, 2016 in Lima, Peru the following, “I’m extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we haven’t had the kind of scandals that have plagued other administrations.”

The context of Obama’s almost insane remark was a question about whether President-elect Donald Trump should put all of his assets in a blind trust or not to avoid conflicts of interest.  In an interview with CNN, Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, who many believe was the power behind the throne, unabashedly took the claim a gigantic leap further saying, “The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal and he hasn’t done something to embarrass himself.”

There are real, honest and good people who actually believe this and cannot be dissuaded by facts in spite of the 663 scandals of the Obama Administration ranging from “Fast and Furious” to “Benghazi” to the “IRS targeting conservative groups” and beyond.

These same people have spent the past week posting Meryl Streep’s Golden Globe speech attacking Donald Trump and casting Hollywood as dissident, aggrieved outsiders. Of course George Clooney, Barbra Streisand and others, who somehow remain in the United States in spite of their pledge to leave, weighed in supporting Streep demonstrating the chasm between how they view the world, and how those who voted for Trump view it.

Meryl Streep is a great actress, able to display a vast array of fake emotions to meet the needs of a variety of roles.  Her performance in Sophie’s Choice was perhaps one of the most compelling in the history of cinema. And it should not be surprising that when she stood on the stage being honored by her peers that she would animate words that either she or someone else wrote.

While it is normal for people who just lost an election to feel as if they are out in the cold, it requires a special kind of self-absorption for the wealthiest, best looking and most famous in the world to cast themselves in this role. Yet, there are millions of Americans who will look at these professional fakes who take private jets to conferences on global warming and feel sorry for them.

These same people find it hard to understand that there is no difference between a baker or florist who turn away the business of a homosexual wedding and a performer who declines to perform for an Inaugural function.

But perhaps the most stunning delusional statement of them all was President Obama’s contention to George Stephanopolous on ABC News last week that race relations are better today than when he took office. When pushed by Stephanopolous about the horrific video of four blacks torturing a white disabled man, Obama expressed disgust over the actions, but dismissed it as an insignificant indicator of race relations.

CNN anchor Don Lemon perhaps best demonstrated the true racial divide that has either been exposed or further opened during the Obama Administration when he reacted to the above video stating, “I don’t think it’s evil. I don’t think it’s evil. I think these are young people, and I think they have bad home training… I have no idea who is raising these young people because no one I know on earth who is 17-years-old, or is 70-years-old, would ever think of treating another person like that. It is inhumane, and you wonder, at 18 years old, where is your parent? Where is your guardian?”

And that is the ultimate delusion facing America. The South Carolina shooter who killed nine black Christians in their prayer group is evil just as torturing a special needs white person live on Facebook is evil.

Post-Obama, America is more divided than ever, however the divide is not racial, but rather a reality divide.  This is a divide where half of the country believes that President Obama was scandal-free and the other half has been outraged by the abject abuse of power by the outgoing Administration. It is a divide where the beautiful, wealthy cultural opinion makers in Hollywood feel put upon by the rest of us, and news anchors who are supposed to tell us what is happening cannot see evil even when it is right before their eyes.

Before he was president, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln made what was seen as a politically incorrect, radical speech stating, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

“The complete works of Abraham Lincoln” which was edited by Roy Bastrop puts this speech into context reported Lincoln saying this to his friends who urged him to calm his “house divided” language, “The proposition is indisputably true … and I will deliver it as written. I want to use some universally known figure, expressed in simple language as universally known, that it may strike home to the minds of men in order to rouse them to the peril of the times.”

Just as Lincoln worried about the future of his nation, it is fair to ask 159 years later if the current reality divide is the modern equivalent of Lincoln’s “house divided” and if so, can our nation stand in light of it.

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