Great move by President Trump not to be at the White House Correspondents Dinner. What a terrific juxtaposition in images.
In one image you have the President with middle class Americans and middle America blue collar workers celebrating his actions and plans for making America greater, safer and more prosperous. And in the OTHER image you have smug jokesters and vengeful biased media, dressed in tuxedos and jewels at a highbrow dinner in the heart of the D.C. swamp with an agenda to discredit and mock that very effort. Sadly, those two images tell you everything you need to know about Washington today.
In America there is the majority Party sent to Washington, as well as the vast majority of State Capitals, to lead. And, then there is the other Party that is determined to undermine that leadership.
It is incumbent on both of parties to seek some basis for compromise. On the other hand, if the party in leadership continues to be treated the way that the minority party and the media are acting, then Leadership must act to fulfill it's promise to those who put them in power. That is just the way it works, for better or worse.
It is not in the LONG term interests for a country to be unable to address large problems that require LONG term vision and policies, to be changing course again and again.
Such is the damaging effects of partisanship, which George Washington warned us of. That is what is happening, and so we will continue to get this whipsaw pendulum political atmosphere in which the far sides of policy and politics increases the divide in America.
People continue to move to the far side of their respective parties. It is becoming harder and harder to move to the middle, especially with the media and celebrities being so predominately far left and continuing to fan the flames as they did at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Also, there is nearly fascist treatment by far left faculty on college campuses that continue to block free speech from the right and in turn are motivating the rise of young Republican and conservative student audiences. With such fascist like behavior, one can be shocked but should not surprised by the rise in violence.
The Democrats would do well to recall George Washington's advice to Alexander Hamilton who found himself in the minority in Congress. Essentially, Washington told Hamilton to work it out - to compromise. And so should the Republicans the next time they find themselves in a minority.
Or, have we become so philosophically divided that we are unable recognize shared underlying values? That truly would threaten the great American experiment our Founding Fathers started.
I am an optimist. But I have evidence that America can withstand this test, because we withstood an even greater test, under a Republican President no less, named Abraham. If America will remember the Judea-Christian values we were founded under we will survive. If we forget, then we truly are lost!
