Last night, Nicole Wallace, former White House communications director under President George W. Bush, traitor, and overall vapid shrew, was interviewed on “The Late Show” by Stephen Colbert. A good chunk of the ten minute interview was dedicated to the demonization of the GOP and former president Trump to the point where they were aligning the party with the “rise of white supremacy” in America. Wallace has embraced the moniker of “self-loathing former Republican” as she now works for the most propaganda-laden “news” network on cable television, MSNBC. She discussed how the Republican party had changed from her days in the White House, and she made one statement that really stuck with me. She stated, “[The Republicans] are so far from the truth that you can no longer have a conversation with them about how to solve anything because they don’t agree on what the problems are, and that terrifies me.”
Just like Wallace, I am terrified, but of course for the opposite reason. As of today in this country, we have literally hundreds of sources for “news” ranging from online publications to blogs to 24-hour cable networks to online streaming networks. All of these sources fall on one of two sides of the political spectrum, and the two sides present wildly different views of reality. We are approaching the point that one side might say that it is currently snowing with a wind chill of -15º in DC while the other side claims is it a sunny and clear 75º. They quite literally portray two different worlds and two different truths. Furthermore, the concept of straight news is no longer in existence. Even the 30-minute broadcast of ABC News, which touts itself as “America’s most trusted news source”, is rife with opinion and spin, and I have caught them in outright lies before.
This drastic difference in narrative and truth-telling leads to viewers on both sides who see a completely different world. Those viewers vote for politicians who share their world-view. The difference between the parties used to be that they saw different ways of resolving the same problems. Now the two sides do not even acknowledge the same problems. Nicole Wallace was correct in her insinuation that Republicans and Democrats cannot even have meaningful conversation because of that fact. Republicans and Democrats no longer live in the same realities. If the two parties do not occupy the same reality, how can they possibly work together for anything for the country? Bipartisanship is a thing of the past. That should be enough to scare anyone.
We have already seen the death and destruction these simultaneous realities can cause. A group of people were fed a certain story about the death of Breonna Taylor that was not fully true and lacked the concrete facts and evidence, and more riotous behavior ensued. As the two realities continue to diverge and the conversations between the sides become more heated and incendiary, I fear what we saw this summer is just the tip of the iceberg of what is to come. We are surely in for more scenes like this:
