At 3:56 p.m. on May 10, Jean called the Reno News & Review. It was a Saturday, and I didn’t answer, so Jean left a message—because she had some things to say.
“I am disgusted in RN&R,” she said, starting off a message that would go on for two minutes, 11 seconds; what follows are her verbatim words. “That’s absolutely despicable that everything in your paper—I couldn’t even read but a few editions, because it is so woke, so Marxist, so awful. Nevada—I’ve been here since ’69, and Nevada was a wonderful state then, where we had honest editorialism, honest people, not all of this crap that’s going on throughout the state of Nevada, the state of New York, the state of Washington, the state of Oregon, and on and on, of these horrible blue state countries—uh, blue states, that are turning our country into a horrible situation, if they can.”
At this point, Jean’s voice was rising. She was wound. She was pissed.
“Trump is the only one, the ONLY one, that has been able to get our country on the right track. You had a demented old man, demented old man, and the Democrat, Marxist, communist, socialist regime are the ones that are trying to destroy our country with the help of Soros, with all the money that he’s buying people, like the judges, etcetera. This is absolutely disgusting, and I cannot believe—I can’t even look at your paper, it is so despicable. You are only one-sided. You don’t even try to find out what the truth is. All you want to do is try to continue with a newspaper that’s for Marxists, socialists, communists and Demo-rats. This is Jean (last name redacted)! Our libraries are terrible, because we have people that are destroying our children by trying to put transgender and gay-type books in our library. Shame on you! SHAME ON YOU!”
On Monday, I called her back. I didn’t want to call her back, because I didn’t think it would go well, but I felt the need to try to have a conversation, one American voter talking to another. I wanted to understand where she was coming from, even if I didn’t agree with it.
She answered after the first ring. I told her who I was, and that I was returning her call. According to my call log, we spoke for about 2 1/2 minutes. Readers, I truly tried to engage her in a civil, honest conversation—but all she wanted to do was spew vitriol.
One of the reasons I’m pretty pessimistic about the future of the U.S. is that there are a lot of people like Jean, who no longer view people on the other side of the political aisle as fellow Americans with whom they simply disagree. They view them as enemies, as rotten, as sick, as Marxists, as “Demo-rats.” And this tone starts at the top.
This, verbatim, is what the president of the United States posted on Truth Social, to start Memorial Day:
“HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL. BUT FEAR NOT, WE HAVE MADE GREAT PROGRESS OVER THE LAST 4 MONTHS, AND AMERICA WILL SOON BE SAFE AND GREAT AGAIN! AGAIN, HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
This is horrifying and terrifying. (An aside: Did you notice that in the post, President Trump didn’t mention fallen veterans, or even the military? How is this OK?)
No matter where we fall on today’s rather warped political spectrum, we need to look at our fellow Americans with humanity, and not as enemies, or as un-American, or as evil—or as scum with warped, radical minds, who are trying to ruin our country.
The number of times I have heard people note that “ONLY” Fox news is right, shakes me.
When asked my opinion about the ‘drones’ over New Jersey at the time people were concerned / wondering / freaking about about them, that it could be ‘food’ delivery drones, ‘medical’ delivery drones, Amazon and other ‘goods’ delivery drones, news drones, police drones, kids playing with drones that with the publicity more people could be flying them. That with the FAA allowing night time flying and beyond the horizon flying, it could all add up to such happening.
(This is stuff that has been talked about on numerous type of news and talks shows as drones have come more prevalent.)
The people I told this to came back saying, “you are wrong” … … … Fox News noted a conspiracy happening and .
The [more severe] divide anymore as people look to only one [type of] news source is deriding the country.
Sad.
Regarding Jimmy Boegle’s call for civility – It would be swell if rational discourse or even something close to that could become the preferred method for our politics. Unfortunately, there is a huge market for keeping the public hyperventilating and vitriol is how it’s done. Also, it’s often a fine line between calling out BS and being part of the vitriol.
I tune in to right-wing talk radio on a semi-regular basis just to check in on what they’re making noise about and it’s usually hard-core divisive fear mongering and vitriolic commentary. I have to log on and stream to get left-wing talk radio in our area, and mostly they’re commenting on what right-wing media is saying, but they also have their flavor of vitriol. And then there are the late-night talk show monologues which are hugely vitriolic but frosted with thick layers of comedy so that we won’t notice.
A lot of money is being made and a lot of dopamine is being processed based on maintaining the status quo or maybe even turning it up a few notches. And the First Amendment protects it all, as it should.
But Jimmy is absolutely right; the vitriol needs to end.