In all, it’s been a perfect storm of political and cultural polarization — and one that goes quite a bit beyond the rule recently proposed by journalist James Kirchick: “Every day, the American left behaves in ways designed to ensure Donald Trump’s re-election.” While that may well be true, the process also works in the reverse direction, with the right provoking the more high-minded center and center-left to move leftward and downward, into ever-more strident politicization.
We saw it this week: Trump gives an unhinged 80-minute tirade of a speech at a rally in Phoenix, including incessant lacerating attacks on the media (and especially CNN) for being his enemy. Then following the speech a panel of pundits on CNN lays into him for being a deranged lunatic who’s unfit for high office — thereby making his case to his most devoted supporters.
And so it goes, round and round. President Trump is a big part of the dynamic, but removing him from the picture won’t automatically steady the ship of state — especially when the act of removing him would convince millions of his admirers that, if anything, his paranoid, conspiracy-tinged accusations about the “swamp” of Washington, the deep state, and the media were understated.
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