We are now, as I type this blog, in a cold civil war here in America. Right vs. left politics. Half the country despises the other half. President Trump didn’t cause this division, but his election is a result of it. Digital technology has changed the way we get our information about the world and our causes and values. It’s possible, now, to exist only in your bubble, without having to confront any ideas that you disagree with.

I won’t make a case for “both sides are to blame”. The overwhelming reason politics are so toxic nowadays is because of the actions of the conservative Republican party. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s declaration that “government is the problem”, his anti-union policies, continuing through Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America”, in which Gingrich, with the help of Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, developed a strategy to use language and words to sanitize their ideas and to deceive voters as to the true intent of their policies. And shortly after that, Fox News was launched as a counterweight to what many people considered to be the “liberal bias” of mainstream news media. Fox News has become a propaganda station for the right wing. And if people get all their news from Fox and the conservative internet sites such as Breitbart, they can actually live in an alternate universe, where legitimate news is fake news. Liberals have MSNBC, which gives news from a left-side point of view, but MSNBC has never been in the business of trafficking in conspiracy theories, nor have they used their platform as a propaganda outlet the way Fox has.

Sometimes I feel as though our political divisions are not so much a matter of differing ideas, as much as a matter of different personalities. I often feel as though I have two opposing values in my personality. Both of them want to dominate my belief system. It isn’t that I don’t understand how the other side feels, because part of me feels the same way. It’s just that I don’t allow the “conservative” side of me to win over my allegiance. And just for the record, I want to note that there is a lot going on in the right-wing universe that has nothing to do with conservatism. I just use the term interchangeably with “right-wing”, but the latter term is really more accurate.

I know that Americans who fit into my demographic profile, i.e. white men over 50 years old, voted for Republican candidates by large majorities.

So I’m a little curious as to why I didn’t go along with the rest of my cohort. I sometimes agree with what they say. One thing that conservative media does frequently, not so often in liberal media, is stereotyping liberals to a degree that, if I was to believe their stereotype, I would dislike liberals too. So I am more discriminating about what type of media I consume than some of my fellow male baby boomers.

Another thing is that I have remained consistent with myself over the years. Several years ago, when I first joined Facebook, I was surprised and appalled to see how many of my old crowd, who never seemed to have much use for authority or buttoned-down conservatives, had gone over to the right. I don’t know why that happened to them and not to me. One possibility is that they were beset by expenses and high taxes in their lives, and bought into the idea that conservatives would save them money in the form of lower taxes. That might be part of what changed them over. Maybe some of them got high-level positions, and they fell in with the crowd at that level, and adopted some of their beliefs.

A further reason why I don’t like Republicans is that I don’t like bullies. I have seen and experienced bullying, and I find it reprehensible and amoral. Bullying says that I can take whatever I can get away with taking. Sounds like a pretty good description of today’s Republican party. A certain Supreme Court judgeship comes to mind.

Like I said before, I sometimes feel like I have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The devil tells me to stick with my demographic, don’t worry about the poor or anybody else. Just vote for your own interests. The angel tells me that the devil is a liar. The angel tells me that, even if I voted for what the devil says are my interests, I would be voting against my interests. I have a hard time understanding how people in the middle classes can think that Trump is on their side, or that any Republican politician is. Trump is an accomplished con man and liar. He said what he knew that voters wanted to hear. Drain the swamp! Remember the forgotten man! He spoke the language of populism, but all of his actions have been in favor of the rich, just like any other Republican. The only difference is that Trump talked a good con game, much better than most Republican politicians, but he is no different than any of them.

So, to summarize, I have a conservotard on my right shoulder, and a libtard on my left. I have learned through my reading and consuming truth-telling media (not just MSNBC), that the conservotard is a con artist. Even if I was to vote for what he says are my interests, they are not. Trump’s recent tax cut, humorously titled the “Tax and Jobs Act”, was almost universally panned by economists as being bad for the economy. And since we all are dependent on a healthy economy to keep us prosperous, it seems that the tax and jobs act was passed on false premises. Or lies, if you will. My conservotard devil is lying to me. Get thee behind me, Satan!