An unhealthy asymmetry

An interesting opening. From Trump's Week vs. Washington's Week: It's No Contest by Steve Cortes.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” So begins Charles Dickens’ classic novel “A Tale of Two Cities.” The political reality in America reflects a sort of Dickensian dichotomy at present.

Indeed. A nice encapsulation of an argument I have made before.

I don't think we have the polarization the MSM and politicians like to chatter on about. For ninety percent of Americans, we all rub along more or less amicably. And most of us are sick and tired of the Mandarin Class - their arrogance, their ignorance, their corruption and their incompetence. Leave us alone and let us get on our with our productive lives, free from your statist agendas.

Both establishment parties are at risk in this view and it is worldwide phenomenon. In the US, one party is further along in learning to respond to real citizens rather than just to special interests but they are both struggling.

I have also made the argument that this all seems an existential crisis because the Mandarin Class, mainstream media, the entertainment industry and a good chunk of Academia are all concentrated in a handful of deep blue mega-cities which, because of their malign benevolent statist policies, suffer excessive taxes, poor government services, deep financial inequality, financial fragility, homelessness, poverty, mental health issues, etc. far in excess of anywhere else in the US. For journalists, they are reporting the hell they are living and think it is representative of the rest of America.

Cortes captures it nicely. A Tale of Two Nations, perhaps; the part within those blue cities and then everywhere else. And the Mandarin Class in those handful of cities have their own market square called Twitter. That is where they meet, talk, lament. But they fail to recognize that even if the Agora is outraged, it still only represents 22% of Americans. Primarily Blue America. Most people with rich complex lives out beyond the bounds of the metropolitan are too busy to indulge themselves on Twitter. Their voices are lost from the Mandarin Class conversation. And when not lost, when they speak up, they are deplatformed and cancelled.

It is definitely a partisan column but strongly argued. He makes an additional point on another topic which I have not seen elsewhere.

Like Osama bin Laden, Baghdadi met his fate with assistance from valiant U.S. special ops forces. Those troops eliminated this menace with bravery, skill, and precision. Their success reflects well on our unmatched military and on the commander-in-chief. President Trump dispatched Baghdadi and the larger geopolitical threat of his evil caliphate without the risks of a wholesale U.S. invasion and the concomitant costs and pitfalls of idealistic nation-building.

Somehow, the thoroughly biased media found fault with this unquestionable success. They wailed that the it had happened “in spite” of Trump, rather than at his direction. The obstinance of the liberal establishment press contrasted starkly with conservative media in 2011, which overwhelmingly congratulated President Obama following the great achievement of dispatching bin Laden. For conservatives, killing the 9/11 mastermind superseded partisanship. For mainstream media in 2019, hatred of Trump eclipses even patriotic tendencies to celebrate the elimination of a dangerous threat to our nation. So torn was the Washington Post that the headline on its obituary for this monster described him as an “austere religious scholar.” Reacting to that tone-deaf description, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo highlighted Baghdadi’s personal role in the rape and murder of American aid worker Kayla Mueller and stated: “To suggest that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was anything other than a murderous terrorist is truly sick.”

Everyone has been talking about the tone deafness and inappropriateness of the mainstream media response to the death of al-Baghdadi but I haven't seen anyone else comment on the asymmetry. That Republicans celebrated the Democratic achievement in 2011 but the Democrats cannot bring themselves to celebrate the same accomplishment on the part of Republicans.