What Is Causing the Divided America?

            There is a big division in the United States, the biggest that I have known in my lifetime. It appears that there are two Americas – one on the right and one on the left of the divide. What causes such a divide? Can the gulf be bridged? Dennis Prager says the divide is “unbridgeable” and gives three reasons.

First, we are divided by our vision of what we want America to be. The right believes the Founders’ vision was brilliant and moral, that bourgeois middle-class values are superior to alternative value system; that rights come from God, not man; and that the state must be as small as possible. The left (not liberals) shares none of those values.

Second, we are divided by the means we use to achieve our vision. Given their different ends, left and right obviously differ on what means to use to achieve their ends.

Third, and perhaps most troubling, there is a reality-perception divide. Left and right have different perceptions of reality.

            Prager used a personal experience to show the divide in the perception reality of left and right. He explained that he was a guest on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” The other two guests and most of the audience were left. He was booed with each of the following statements.

·         Though there are racists in the United States, America is the least racist multiethnic and multiracial country in the world.

·         The United States military has brought so much liberty to the world it deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. 

·         It turned out the Russia-Trump campaign collusion never happened.

·         The Trump-Ukrainian president phone transcript did not show a quid pro quo.

·         John Brennan, the former CIA director, has voted communist. (He has admitted that he voted for the Communist Party USA presidential candidate Gus Hall in 1976.)

·         No one booed when Prager said that people on the left say men can menstruate.

We can debate which side is living in the real world, and which side is living in the land

of make believe. However, we must admit that one side is living in the reality of NOW and one side is not. For example, Democrats were sure that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. Special investigator Mueller took two years and spent $30 million, but he found no collusion. Other investigations looked at different aspects of the so-called collusion but found nothing. Anyone living in the real world must admit that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia; otherwise, Mueller would have found it.


            Another example is Brennan voting communist. He admitted voting for a communist. Anyone who cannot accept Brennan’s admission is not living in the real world.


            A third example pertains to men menstruating. In the first place, no real man would have anything to do with menstruation because they want to be as far from it as possible! Yet, there are some women who believe that they are men, and they menstruate. The fact is that they are still women; otherwise, they would not be menstruating. Men do not menstruate because men do not have ovaries, uterus, or other female parts. Dressing and acting like a man do not a man make no matter how much a woman wants to be a man.


            The saddest difference in my mind between the reality of the right and the reality of the left has to do with the difference between capitalism and socialism. The fact is that “only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty,” while socialism has destroyed economies in numerous nations. Prager closes with this statement.

The reason that this [different realities on socialism and capitalism] is so frightening is that it means one side has lost its grip on reality. If half of this country cannot distinguish truth form falsehood, that is not a good sign for the nation’s future.

On that point, ironically, left and right can agree.

I find it unbelievable that people can experience the great improvements in the economy of the United States since Trump took office and not actually “see” them. They claim that they are trying to protect our nation from destruction, when Trump has brought the nation back from the brink of the Obama destruction. This must be a special kind of blindness – a blindness of mind or unwillingness to see. The scriptures call this state “hardness of heart.”

I suppose that Prager must be right. The gulf between the reality of the left and the reality of the right is unbridgeable unless hearts soften enough for eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel the truth as it really was and as it really is. May God bless and protect America!