The Great Divide: Rush or Where We Live!

[Editorial]

What changed? How did we go from a nation that had civil discourse to one antagonistic and at odds with each other? How did we become so polarized?

When did politics go from talking to violence?

My thoughts changed with talk radio. Some guy named Rush Limbaugh.

Before he started, the radios in the shop played music all day. You walked around cubicalville; you just heard music or the occasional news radio show. Then Rush came.

WTIC AM changed from all news to all talk to conservative talk with Rush and a local Rush wannabe. We were split right down the middle, half listening to Rush. Then a small minority started listening to PBS and NPR.

But so did politics. Reagan began the political split. Echo chambers started to form, directed at liberals, at Democrats, and then at immigrants.

Talk radio was all right-wing pundits spouting their dislike of anything "liberal." They disliked the educated elite, the Harvard-educated. The talk shows catered to the anger of the working class—at the unions, at the liberal colleges, at trans people, at gays, at immigrants. The shows were what stirred the pot.

Then came politicians who used that anger, like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, to rally their base.

Then Trump used that anger the first time to get elected. He was stymied by Congress, so he went away and reformulated the anger. In his speeches, you can hear the vitriol; he plays to their hidden racism, letting it out of the box with his "anti-woke" messaging targeting hate. He plays to their xenophobia, claiming things like "the Haitians are eating pets!"

He changed the discussion from big government vs. small government, from regulations vs. deregulations, to hate and anti-Christian sentiment. Trump used minorities to stir up his base.

The Republican message changed; to anti-immigrant, to anti-trans, to anti-minority. Along with that came hate, executive orders, draconian laws, and enforcement.

The question remains… how do we end this? Or, more importantly, where is this leading us?

[/Editorial]