{"id":37007,"date":"2017-01-24T02:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T07:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37007"},"modified":"2017-01-23T08:36:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-23T13:36:57","slug":"a-nation-divided-against-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/01\/24\/a-nation-divided-against-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"A nation divided against itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bretigne Shaffer<\/a> on the intensely partisan American political scene:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a weird couple of months. I\u2019ve seen more people unfriend each other on FaceBook than in the past few years combined; There have been several reports of both Trump supporters and minorities being physically attacked; I\u2019ve been asked to wear a safety pin to proclaim to the world that I am not a racist, because the presumption now is that everyone is a racist and you have to (secretly – only not so secretly) announce to everyone if you\u2019re not; and the senior editor of ThinkProgress<\/em> is afraid of his plumber. (This, based solely on whatever profiling techniques they use over at ThinkProgress<\/em> – \u201c\u2026a middle-aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this week\u2019s news.\u201d – rather than anything resembling a conversation with the man.)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: I\u2019m a libertarian. I\u2019ve been surrounded by people who don\u2019t agree with me for as long as I can remember and it has never occurred to me to isolate myself from everyone because of our political differences. Certainly not to assault them. Nor am I filled with anxiety by the thought that people who work in my home might have different political views than mine. To me, you\u2019re all a bunch of fascists. But I\u2019ve somehow learned to live with you.<\/p>\n

For me, watching people unravel over this election has been instructive. The – yes, I\u2019m going to say it – bigotry of many on the left, in their caricaturing of Trump supporters, has never before been so blatant. Nor has the jaw-dropping, mass-hypnosis level of selective partisan-driven outrage. I understand that a lot of people are worried, upset, even frightened over the prospect of a Trump presidency. Good. They should be. But they should have been worried eight years ago, or at the very least, four years ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bretigne Shaffer on the intensely partisan American political scene: It\u2019s been a weird couple of months. I\u2019ve seen more people unfriend each other on FaceBook than in the past few years combined; There have been several reports of both Trump supporters and minorities being physically attacked; I\u2019ve been asked to wear a safety pin to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,53,13],"tags":[391,1020,99,593],"class_list":["post-37007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-politics","category-usa","tag-facebook","tag-progressives","tag-racism","tag-socialmedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9CT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37008,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37007\/revisions\/37008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}