This “Part 2” isn’t turning out the way I planned… As a casual student of history, I’m finding the shifting allegiances and undercurrents (and sheer idiocy that’s on display) to be fascinating. And not a little alarming, since this country has not been this dramatically divided since Lincoln was President.

I decided I wanted to do a “Part 2” because as I was writing “Part 1” (https://divided-states.com/?p=368), I was reminded of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a conservative friend of mine. We were sitting around, not being politically correct, smoking (it was tobacco, honest) and drinking adult beverages, and talking about everything – but mostly politics and social issues. That conversation was instrumental in clarifying my own understanding about what it is to be conservative or liberal – it’s not what you think it is, not what it’s come to mean – and what exactly the “Politics of Division” is.

You know the term “Divide and Conquer.” The Politics of Division is the sociopolitical application of that concept, which has been around for thousands of years. As I said last time, it’s dividing a population into smaller, distrustful groups, which makes them easier to manipulate and control, to subjugate and rule. Those who practice it are skilled in basic human psychology, and prey on our inherent distrust of anything that is different from ourselves, amplifying that distrust.

We find ourselves in our current situation – at each others’ throats – because of their success over the past few decades. In as diverse a nation as we are, with people whose ancestors come from all around the globe, representing all religions (or none), colors, creeds, languages, abilities and disabilities, etc., there are always going to be differences that can be exploited by someone who wants power.

Nor is it the exclusive purview of one political party or another. It is a common political practice to evoke a “them vs. us” mentality to keep their supporters inflamed and distrustful of others.

The situation we find ourselves in now has strong echoes of the divisions this country faced under Lincoln. Only now the faces have changed, and allegiances have been reversed. Which, as I said, I find utterly fascinating…

I think it’s well documented that it was the Democrats of the south that fomented the Civil War and its bloody and racist aftermath; they were pro-slavery, formed the Ku Klux Klan, erected monuments to Confederate heroes, wrote “Jim Crow” laws excluding non-whites from neighborhoods, even entire states. They rioted, assassinated politicians who didn’t agree with them (mostly Republicans), lynched Blacks…

Don’t believe me? Look it up for yourselves. Happened in Louisiana (or was it Mississippi?) when Grant was President, as the Reconstruction stumbled to a halt. The “Jim Crow” laws and Confederate monument building continued until the mid-1900s – a full century, at least three, maybe even four generations after the Civil War ended. Schools were segregated well into the 1960’s.

The dividing lines between Black and White were still stark only 50 years ago.

And you wonder why there are claims of “systemic racism”…

The Politics of Division…

It was in the middle years of the 20^th Century that the Democratic Party began to reject overt racism in favor of a more subtle version of racial “divide and conquer,” and set themselves on the path that brings us to today. Instead of terrorizing Blacks, they turned to Welfare and “affirmative action” programs to make predominantly Black neighborhoods dependent on government handouts – and therefore be under their control just as thoroughly – even more so – than with the threat of a lynch mob.

They gave bonuses for children, for being a single mother, insuring broken homes and missing fathers. The destruction of the nuclear family was accelerated in those poor neighborhoods. Black or White – but predominantly Black – neighborhoods… All the while reinforcing the idea that because their parents and grandparents were oppressed, they deserve a handout.

Nah, nothing racist about that.

At the same time, the Republican Party was opposing a lot of the Welfare programs being proposed and implemented. The motivation for this opposition was because they were, for the most part, old-school in their attitudes about getting ahead in the world, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, hard work equals success and advancement, all those cliché sayings that are nonetheless accurate depictions of the attitudes that had built this country into the world’s preeminent power. Of course, few people put it in those terms, least of all the Democrats.

It was also during this time that the overt racists abandoned by the Democratic Party were drifting into the Republican Party, as they saw these conservative leanings as a more welcoming atmosphere. That influx of radical attitude (which would become today’s “alt-right”) started swinging the party even further right, as the Democratic Party swung left. It would appear that, in some respects, each party is slowly becoming what the other was the previous century… Fascinating…

That did not stop the party committees from colluding to limit the voting choices of the American public, though…

But I digress. Actually, I’m not. I’m talking about the Politics of Division.

The rise of the internet and its 24-hour news cycle, coupled with universal access capable of reaching millions without being filtered through any kind of “fact-checking” process, fractured the “traditional” divisions into dozens of smaller, more intense groups. And the louder these fringe groups shout, the more they overtake the dialogue and overall narrative. Now, anything “conservative” is a racist-epithet shouting, Battle-Flag-waving, foaming-at-the-mouth white-supremacist, anything “liberal” is a violent, BLM-flag waving, foaming-at-the-mouth anarchist. One is the Democratic Party, one is the Republican Party, as far as most media is concerned.

That does the vast majority of us a grave disservice, conservative and liberal alike. In truth, the Parties have fractured, too. While most of the media paints it in absolutes, the alt-right minority does not represent the actual Republican mainstream, any more than “Antifa” anarchists represent the Democrat mainstream.

He and I may disagree on certain specifics, but my friend is a conservative of the old school. One of the least racist people I’ve ever known, one who wants to see everybody – male, female, black, white, whatever – get an equal shot. He knows that’s not going to happen under a Democratic administration. It’s the Politics of Division at work.

He’s a Republican, so right now he’s being painted into the same corner as people he wouldn’t be caught dead with. That’s not right. But it is the Politics of Division.

So why doesn’t he leave the party? I don’t know his thinking, but from my perspective, that’s a very complicated question.

The Republican Party is in the middle of fracturing, losing high-profile members (which makes the Party even more radical), and nobody knows where the final rupture is going to happen, where on the scale between cogent thinking and radical fringe. The One-Party-Rule crowd (which much of the media represents) want the entire Party to dissolve into ineffectiveness, but I suspect the reality will be a new political party will be formed by the radical fringe, which will drag a few staunch conservatives with it; how many will depend on other considerations as it happens. The only question will be whether it’s by their own doing, or if the “mainstream” reasserts itself and rejects the radicals. Frankly, I hope it’s the latter, that the Party gets reclaimed by the majority of its members; it’s probably a vain hope, but either way, the GOP will get less radical… Of course, it’s possible that the mainstream will walk away from the Republican Party and form a new party, call it something else, but I think that even less likely.

I’d like to see much the same thing happen to the Democratic Party, since more radical voices seem to have taken it over, too, but we’ll see.

Anyway. Another factor is to consider the historical Party platform, primarily the conservative principles of fiscal responsibility and smaller government; anyone leaving the Republican Party is walking away from a platform they have supported for years. True, the Libertarian platform is similar on those points, but there are other planks in the Libertarian platform that even moderate Republicans find unpalatable.

And of course, there are the issues of familiarity, the traditional “strength in numbers” aspect of opposition to the platform of the Democrats, the personal interpretations of the political landscape… And the fact that the people painting him into that corner want to erase him and every other conservative, reasonable or not.

I left all political parties behind almost 40 years ago because of the games they played, even then. I refuse to play the Politics of Division. Unfortunately, I’m only one, apparently of a very few…