The sickness infests both sides

Professor Ken Storey of the University of Tampa has at least had the good grace- and the decency- to apologize for having tweeted that Hurricane Harvey seems like "instant karma" for Texas having supported President Trump last November. But that doesn't make the remark itself any the less reprehensible- in fact, downright disgusting. And it just goes to show that the Left has no grounds for sanctimony when it comes to the wave of ugly, irrational hate and malice which Donald John Trump surfed into the Oval Office on.

Nor does it have reason to feel superior because of Mr. Trump's outrageous and oft-repeated claim that there was "blame on both sides" for the weekend of terror Klansmen, Nazis, and other Alt-Right stormtroopers visited upon Charlottesville, Virginia a couple of weeks ago culminating in violence which had been carefully planned for and even practiced and drilled for was initiated by the Klan and the Nazis against Leftist counter-demonstrators. That individual Antifa demonstrators did, indeed, also commit acts of violence, and not all of them in self-defense doesn't change the overwhelming weight of responsibility resting on those who planned it, initiated it, and took the only life lost on either side.

Yes, Charlottesville was predominantly the doing of the Alt-Right, and President Trump was disingenuous when he tried to share out the blame between the outright fascists who have to a large extent formed the core of his support  ever since he declared his candidacy and their opponents, some of whom are no more savory but whose actions in Charlottesville simply do not bear nearly the same weight of responsibility for the violence. But Prof. Storey's sick and outrageous tweet is only the latest evidence of how deeply the corrosive cancer of hate and vitriol is eating up the Left as well. Remember the Democratic crowds that cheered the news of President Reagan's death? Remember cartoonist (?) Ted Rall's comment when he heard the news that "I'm sure (Reagan) is turning crispy brown right now?"

The Left rightly condemns the Right's outrageous treatment of President Obama. But its claim that it was unprecedented rings hollow in the face of what if anything was its own even more outrageous treatment of the second President Bush.

Both sides are so caught up- and rightly so!- in the ugliness and vitriol of the other side's hate as to be totally oblivious to its own.  Every problem is the fault of the other guy, and every enormity committed by my side is justified by what your side did first. I've noticed ever since President Trump took office that every criticism of Mr. Trump is met by "But Obama...." or "But Hillary..." When Mr. Trump took heat from the press for his outrageous pardon of totalitarian former sheriff Joe Arpaio, he actually defended himself by pointing to the people President Obama pardoned! That two wrongs make a right seems to have become not only an article of faith to the president and his supporters but an adequate rebuttal to anything and everything!

The ideological bias of the media- artfully exploited by Mr. Trump with his mantra of "fake news-" has not only permitted the president to assault its credibility believably but rendered them useless as means for sorting out the truth from the lies and distortions which have come to dominate our political culture. Mr. Trump, Fox News, and the often-ludicrous Alt-Right media like Breitbart have set up a counter-hub of reportorial baloney which more and more people choose to believe despite the absurdity of the propaganda it peddles because the traditional media has forfeited the confidence of the public in its objectivity. As we have become ever more polarized as a society, we have more and more come to live in our own, separate, ideologically-filtered universes, inhabiting our own echo-chamber worlds in which truth is not what is, but rather what we choose to believe that it is. Mitt Romney told President Obama during the 2012 debates that while he was entitled to his own opinion, he was not entitled to his own facts. But today, only five years later, all of us have our own facts, and we don't even share a common reality to discuss in terms which admit of either side recognizing the world in which the other lives as their own.

It's not just the Trump people. And it's not just the Left. It's a society in which hate and partisanship have created discrete universes in which entirely different events occur depending on one's politics and cultural background.

And it's created a universe in which Democrats can cheer Reagan's death and imply that Texas had it coming for supporting Trump, and in which enemies of justice like Joe Arpaio and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke can be seen as heroes by people who make much of their reverence for the Constitution.  It's created a universe in which people can be dismissed as bigots for their ethical disapproval of sexual behavior, and entire religions stigmatized because the violence of a minority sorts well with the theology of one particular school within it.  It's a universe in which everyone proclaims a belief in freedom of speech while advocating the silencing of anybody who disagrees with them.

We've lost our collective minds, people, and things are getting so bad that it's hard to see how we can get them back again. It's hard to live as a single people when we live in two entirely different universes in which every event has two entirely different sets of facts. And it's hard to see people as one's fellow citizens who say things like Prof. Storey tweeted the other day and like President Trump tweets nearly every day.

At least Prof. Storey has apologized. Now if President Trump would only apologize for anything.....