Step back for just a moment and consider today’s hyper-partisanship and the vast chasm separating our two political sides. Note as well that the polarization is rapidly degenerating into visceral anger, ugly confrontations, and even violent street disturbances.
How can we be so far apart? How can each side be so certain about the rightness of its position and the wrongness of the other? Evidently, two sectors of otherwise sensible Americans are acting on entirely different sets of “facts,” as if it were even possible for there to be multiple, totally incompatible truths.
We tend to blame the massive disconnects on “misinformation” or “disinformation” (the latter intentionally deceptive) fed to the public by media or political operatives. Both can be difficult to screen out because doing so inevitably involves imperfect human arbitration.
However, I suspect a simpler culprit: Many (and perhaps most) of us allow ourselves to be influenced more by our political or ideological predispositions than by the objective facts staring us in the face.
Today’s lightning rod, of course, is President Donald J.Trump, who constantly triggers rigidly held and totally opposite reactions from the two political arenas. Trump is either the devil incarnate, a 21st-century (but far worse) version of Adolf Hitler, or he is our long-awaited savior, our superhero champion who survives assassination attempts, lawfare, and endless slander to restore our lost American greatness.
The president evokes such strong reactions that even those who see him simply as a complex human being with both remarkable talents and glaring shortcomings often feel pushed into one corner or the other. The eminently sensible “I like what he’s done, but I wish…” is inevitably viewed as a cop out. Instead, each of us is expected to declare either that we detest all things Trump or that we are charter members of his cult. There’s never any middle ground.
As a compelling case in point, look no further than the immediate public reaction to National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s revelations last week regarding the genesis of the infamous allegations that presidential candidate Trump had colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election — in Trump parlance, “the Russia hoax.”
If believable, the Gabbard treasure trove of hitherto unseen documents tells us that the Obama team, confronted with the stark reality that the upstart had defeated their chosen successor (and unacceptable) Donald Trump, immediately ordered the U.S. intelligence community to build a case that the Trump win had been substantially aided by Russian influence.
These revelations are stunning in several respects:
- They are not a new concoction ginned up by Trump advocates — they are built on existing, previously classified documents, many from the Obama administration.
- The revisionist intelligence assessment ordered by Obama directly contradicted assessments already in hand, concluding that there had NOT been substantial Russian election interference, and that Russia expected a Clinton victory and was prepared to do its best to undermine it. Moreover, the Obama team took deliberate steps to ensure that the president-elect was not apprised of that previously existing intelligence assessment.
- The allegation that candidate Trump had colluded with Russia was made solely to undermine public confidence in their new president.
As revealed by the newly released information, the actions taken by Team Obama transcend hardball politics. The political party that routinely extols the virtue of peaceful transition of power was, in fact, preparing a transition that looked peaceful but was primed to blow up in the new president’s face the moment he assumed power.
What Obama and his team did was unprecedented and consequential, and it set the stage for all that followed — three years of turmoil, indictment of Trump associates, self-sequestering of Trump’s AG, the Mueller Investigation, Trump’s eventual impeachment (although Democrats ultimately had to settle for a flawed telephone call as the basis for impeachment), the hotly contested 2020 election, and ultimately the pent-up anger from disgruntled Trump supporters that erupted on the following January 6.
We might have expected that this newly revealed info would prompt some soul-searching and self-examination from those who spent years pitching an entirely different narrative. Instead, the reactions from Democrat leadership and mainstream media were as follows:
- Nothing to see here. Tulsi Gabbard is simply currying her boss’s favor.
- It’s classic Trump distraction — trying desperately to deflect public attention away from the Epstein flap.
- Gabbard is trying to rewrite history, ignoring what we already “know” (as if the previous, Pulitzer-winning reporting tells the whole story).
- Crickets. Radio silence. No media reaction at all (sending the message that this story is so weak, it doesn’t even merit reporting).
Do they think we’ve forgotten the years of daily harangue, the incessant claims that our president was a Russian agent, sure to be outed and led away in chains? No one will forget. Despite the immediate — and telling — dismissal by media and pols, I’ve no doubt that they recognize the Gabbard revelations are serious and credible. They won’t go away.
And so, what’s next? Don’t expect a sea change, an overnight epiphany on the part of American media and Democrat Party leaders. Surely (as confirmed by polls for years), most of the Democrat supporters have become comfortable with their old narrative, prize-winning reporting in WaPo and NYT; they’ve long believed the daily “expert” panelists and talkingheads on MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and others. And surely they are skeptical of Tulsi Gabbard — the Democrat turncoat.
Unless, of course, this time the stark, inescapable reality penetrates the public consciousness. This time, we may actually chip away at that smug assurance by so many that the president we’ve now elected twice is as intrinsically evil as they’ve been told.
In describing the newly declassified information, I’ve used the qualifier “if believable.” That’s important. But what could be more believable than existing records from the Obama administration? Should not actual emails with time/date stamps and well-documented last-minute alterations to the security briefings intended for both the sitting president and the president-elect merit our belief?
I, for one, don’t relish the fantasy of legal action targeting the widely admired Barack Obama, a decade after his retirement, and instigated by his party’s political opponents. And that won’t happen anyway, given last year’s SCOTUS ruling on presidential liability. But it sure would be satisfying if FINALLY, just this once, there is much broader public recognition and acceptance that the decade of visceral Trump hatred by so many was — in effect — the product of a Democrat frame-up.
The Trump presidency will succeed only if he continues to make progress on the issues important to Americans. What the Obama administration did eight years ago is not high on that list — but it sure would be nice to set the record straight. It’s right there in front of us. None are so blind as those who refuse to see.
