{"id":10398,"date":"2017-03-06T07:57:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T15:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoshanarabbah.org\/blog\/?p=10398"},"modified":"2017-03-06T07:57:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T15:57:47","slug":"civil-war-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoshanarabbah.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/06\/civil-war-in-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Civil War in the US and Its Causes Excellently Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From World Net Daily at http:\/\/www.wnd.com\/2017\/03\/the-root-cause-of-americas-new-civil-war\/<\/a><\/h1>\n

<\/h3>\n

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME<\/h3>\n

THE ROOT CAUSE OF AMERICA’S NEW CIVIL WAR<\/h1>\n

Exclusive: David Kupelian examines ‘Bizarro’ spiritual polarization of Americans<\/h2>\n<\/hgroup>\n

\"author-image\"\u00a0DAVID KUPELIAN<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
\n
\"Anti-Trump<\/p>\n

Anti-Trump protesters lash out at Trump supporters in Berkeley \u201cMarch-4-Trump\u201d rally March 4 (Photo: Twitter)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Editor\u2019s note: The Age of Trump is characterized by extreme polarization of the American populace, increasing violence and growing accusations of \u201cfascism,\u201d \u201cwhite supremacism\u201d and even \u201cNazism\u201d \u2013 especially directed at the president himself, many even comparing him with Hitler. Tens of millions of everyday Americans are thought of as \u201cracist,\u201d \u201cbigoted,\u201d \u201cwoman-hating,\u201d \u201chomophobic\u201d and \u201canti-immigrant,\u201d not to mention (in Hillary Clinton\u2019s words) \u201cdeplorable\u201d and \u201cirredeemable.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Yet, as David Kupelian reveals below in the opening chapter of his latest book, \u201cThe Snapping of the American Mind,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0America\u2019s extreme polarization started well before Trump. In fact, the nation has been reeling under a full-scale revolutionary attack for many years, leading to the extreme level of anger and division currently gripping the country. And he reveals the true nature of this division, which at core is neither political nor even ideological.<\/em><\/p>\n

As part of my well-rounded childhood, I read \u201cSuperman\u201d comic books.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right. Also \u201cSuperboy,\u201d \u201cBatman and Robin,\u201d \u201cAquaman,\u201d \u201cThe Flash,\u201d \u201cGreen Arrow,\u201d \u201cGreen Lantern\u201d and others \u2013 but my favorite was Superman. And one of the most memorable characters in those adventures was a guy named Bizarro.<\/p>\n

Created when Superman was exposed to a \u201cduplicate ray,\u201d Bizarro was essentially a defective clone of the \u201cman of steel.\u201d Ugly, surly and speaking broken English like Tonto in \u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d (\u201cMe hate Superman! Him bad!\u201d<\/em>), Bizarro\u2019s defining characteristic was his total rebellion against everything normal, everything sensible, everything Superman stood for. Indeed, he took pride in being the exact\u00a0opposite<\/em>\u00a0of Superman in every way.<\/p>\n

Thus, Bizarro eventually relocated to Bizarro World, a cube-shaped planet called Htrae (\u201cEarth\u201d backward). Life on Htrae followed \u201cBizarro logic\u201d \u2013 meaning it was wrong to act in a right or normal way \u2013 and a legal system based on the \u201cBizarro Code,\u201d which decreed it \u201ca crime to do anything well or to make anything perfect or beautiful.\u201d For example, I remember reading, as a 9- or 10-year-old Superman fanatic, how on Bizarro World, when the street-sweeping truck came down the road, instead of sweeping up dirt and debris, the Bizarro street-sweeper would actually\u00a0throw dust and dirt onto the streets<\/em>\u00a0to make them dirtier! In every area of life, Bizarro folk did the opposite of whatever was logical.<\/p>\n

Got the picture?<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s look at today\u2019s USA, which increasingly resembles a \u201cBizarro\u201d version of traditional America \u2013 not just different, not just \u201ctransformed,\u201d but morphed in so many ways into the opposite of what it was in previous generations.<\/p>\n

First, for those who weren\u2019t around during the 1950s, let me just say that the America of my youth, despite its many shortcomings, was basically confident, prosperous and overflowing with life, hope and unlimited opportunity. People were patriotic, and our culture was strong and essentially moral. America was the undisputed leader of the world \u2013 not just militarily and economically, but in terms of freedom and generosity. (To my liberal friends: Do me a favor and don\u2019t tell me,\u00a0\u201cBut the \u201950s had racial segregation.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Yes, and today we dismember, poison, vacuum, crush the skulls of, chemically burn or decapitate 3,000 beautiful human babies every single day. So just drop it.)<\/p>\n

Compared with the shining and vibrant nation it once was, today\u2019s America has become a different country: deeply and angrily divided, unable to deal with crises foreign or domestic, the world\u2019s greatest debtor nation with 50 million people on food stamps, rampant divorce and family breakdown, unprecedented sexual anarchy with 110 million with STDs, almost 60 million abusing alcohol and 70 million taking mood-altering drugs. On so many levels, America is becoming ever more \u201cbizarro\u201d \u2013 diametrically opposed to logic and common sense.<\/p>\n

To really understand what\u2019s happening, we need to transcend the usual left-right paradigm and dive deep into the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n

<\/i>Although America\u2019s bizarro transformation has been in progress for decades, it burst into full bloom in the age of Obama.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a quick trip back in time to the 2008 presidential election. While much of the public was electrified by the soaring rhetoric of a little-known freshman Illinois senator named Barack Obama, just out of view was his astonishingly disturbing background, replete with communists (Frank Marshall Davis), terrorists (William Ayers), criminals (Tony Rezko) and rabid, anti-American racists (Jeremiah Wright) \u2013 not to mention his Islamic education as a boy in Indonesia and his hard-core Marxist orientation in college. But somehow, mesmerized by the prospect of heralding the nation\u2019s first black president, the establishment media couldn\u2019t be bothered to investigate Obama\u2019s qualifications to lead the free world. Just the opposite: He was the object of near-unanimous worship by the major media.<\/p>\n

Now, for comparison, bring to mind the same media\u2019s treatment of Sarah Palin, the junior half of the GOP ticket opposing Obama in \u201908.<\/p>\n

Essentially a very normal American with strongly held Judeo-Christian values, Sarah Palin had grown up bold and outspoken enough to challenge local political corruption, get herself elected mayor, and later become a popular governor of Alaska.<\/p>\n

But once she was tapped by Sen. John McCain to become the Republican vice presidential candidate, an extraordinary phenomenon started to unfold: While studiously ignoring Obama\u2019s obviously subversive background, the media instead sent hordes of journalists to Wasilla, Alaska, dumpster-diving for dirt on Palin \u2013 investigating who paid for the tanning bed she had installed in the governor\u2019s mansion (she did), and whether she is actually the mother of her youngest son, Trig (she is).<\/p>\n

The story took on even more bizarre proportions once Election Day arrived and the Republicans lost. One would think the attacks would have ended, especially after Palin resigned the governorship in mid-2009 (in the face of nonstop harassment) and no longer wielded any official power.<\/p>\n

Instead, the hatred grew. Consider the following 2011 Twitter comments made about Palin:<\/p>\n

\u201cJoin us in praying to God that Sarah Palin contracts cancer and dies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy hatred for Sarah Palin continues to grow. I think this woman should be assassinated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope Sarah Palin dies a slow and painful death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope she dies gnashing her teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSarah Palin is the single most dangerous threat to the future of the human race. Thick venomous cretin she is. Someone bloody shoot her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mind you, these are only five out of\u00a0dozens<\/em>\u00a0of similar Twitter messages, all equally horrendous, calling for an agonizing death for the former governor and VP candidate. They came after a deranged young man named Jared Loughner tried to assassinate Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in downtown Tucson \u2013 and many people, for some incomprehensible reason, blamed Sarah Palin.<\/p>\n

This is not political. Politics cannot account for such dark, otherworldly expressions as \u201cI hope she dies gnashing her teeth,\u201d and death threats against the Palins\u2019\u00a0children<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For years, the left and the major media continued the vilification, with both the Washington Post and New York Times in 2011 begging readers to join in a new witch hunt to find something \u2013\u00a0anything\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 incriminating or embarrassing in 24,000 newly released Palin e-mails. Again, they found nothing.<\/p>\n

What explains such bizarrely extreme hatred \u2013 reprised in late 2013 when MSNBC host Martin Bashir angrily ranted, on the air, that justice would be well served if someone would defecate in Sarah Palin\u2019s mouth?<\/p>\n

Shortly after the \u201908 election, I took a passing stab at this question in my book, \u201cHow Evil Works\u201d:<\/p>\n

Haven\u2019t you ever wondered why, when someone on the public stage radiates noble character, common sense and natural grace \u2013 like Ronald Reagan did, or more recently Sarah Palin \u2013 he or she is regarded by the \u201cbig media\u201d with an inexplicable revulsion? Hatred is almost too soft a word. It\u2019s because Reagan and Palin manifest the very qualities of character that the jaded media elite lost long ago, and since being thus reminded of their lost innocence is painful and unwelcome, they feel compelled to attack the \u201creminder.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later, \u201cRobin of Berkeley\u201d \u2013 literary pseudonym for a licensed therapist in Berkeley, California \u2013 wrote a perceptive column reaching the same conclusion: \u201cLeftists loathe Palin because she has retained something that was stripped from them years ago: a wholesomeness, a purity of heart. People on the left despise Palin because she shines a bright light on their shame and unworthiness, which they try desperately to deny.\u201d<\/p>\n

This phenomenon obviously extends far beyond Sarah Palin. Indeed, what we are looking at here is actually the defining phenomenon of modern American life. It capsulizes the underlying reason today\u2019s secular-left news media, government, school system, and popular culture mysteriously tend to side with the subversive and perverse, and to demonize traditional Judeo-Christian values \u2013 even, as \u201cRobin of Berkeley\u201d put it, to be offended by \u201cwholesomeness\u201d and \u201cpurity of heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consider the case of 13-year-old Taryn Hathaway of Salinas, California, who, according to news reports, was told by a teacher at her middle school that her drawing of the American flag with the words \u201cGod Bless America\u201d inscribed on it was \u201coffensive.\u201d How, one wonders, is this possible or even conceivable? What is there about a child\u2019s lovely drawing of an American flag, with that reverent three-word phrase added, that could be considered even remotely offensive? What exactly is disturbing about a little girl\u2019s innocent expression of love for God and country?<\/p>\n

Or how do we explain the high-profile Lisa Miller custody case? After childhood abuse led her into a dysfunctional life of addictions and homosexuality, eventually Lisa found the Christian faith, freedom from her former bondage, and real hope. She left behind the lesbian lifestyle in which she had lived as \u201cspouse\u201d to another woman in a same-sex civil union. And she dedicated her life to raising her little daughter, Isabella, conceived through artificial insemination and born during her brief homosexual cohabitation. Only one problem: The judge demanded that Lisa allow her former lesbian partner to have unsupervised visits with little Isabella, which according to multiple experts and eyewitness testimony, were so traumatizing to the child that Lisa discontinued allowing the visitations. In response, another judge ruled that Lisa Miller must\u00a0give up her daughter entirely<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 her own legal and biological daughter \u2013 to her former lesbian lover, who had no biological connection to the child. As a result of such legal perversity, Lisa \u201ckidnapped\u201d her own daughter and left the country, rendering her a fugitive and sending a pastor who helped her to prison.<\/p>\n

What would possess a judge to rip a daughter away from her own loving, biological, Christian mother and give the child totally over to a former lesbian partner?<\/p>\n

As a working journalist, I can testify that such examples as these are a daily occurrence in today\u2019s bizarro America. Let\u2019s look at a big one.<\/p>\n

A new kind of extremist<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the early months of Barack Obama\u2019s first term, the Department of Homeland Security produced a report warning about the threat of homegrown, radicalized, militant and potentially violent extremists. And who exactly were these scary people? If you were pro-life, your car had an NRA bumper sticker, you were concerned about illegal immigration or government debt, or especially if you were a returning military veteran \u2013 just home after having defended America with your very life \u2013 you were potentially a dangerous \u201cextremist\u201d and threat to the country, according to the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North responded, in a column headlined, \u201cI am an extremist\u201d:<\/p>\n

According to the U.S. government, I am an extremist.<\/p>\n

I am a Christian and meet regularly with other Christians to study God\u2019s word. My faith convinces me the prophecies in the Holy Bible are true. I believe in the sanctity of human life, oppose abortion and want to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman.<\/p>\n

I am a veteran with skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. I own several firearms, frequently shoot them, buy ammunition and consider efforts to infringe on my Second Amendment rights to be wrong and unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

I fervently support the sovereignty of the United States, am deeply concerned about our economy, increasingly higher taxes, illegal immigration, soaring unemployment and actions by our government that will bury my children beneath a mountain of debt.<\/p>\n

Apparently, all this makes me a \u201cright-wing extremist.\u201d At least that\u2019s what it says in the April 7, 2009, \u201cassessment\u201d issued by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fast-forward a couple of years. After one of several debt-ceiling melodramas in Washington, D.C., during which the tea party demonstrated the most sanity of any of the main players, the New York Times\u2019 Maureen Dowd \u2013 in a column headlined \u201cWashington Chain Saw Massacre\u201d \u2013 characterized tea partiers as \u201ccannibals,\u201d \u201czombies\u201d and \u201cvampires.\u201d She wrote:<\/p>\n

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country\u2019s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in \u201cAlien\u201d flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner\u2019s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s be crystal clear as to who is being talked about. \u201cTea-party members\u201d is just a contemporary label for people who in previous generations would have been described as\u00a0normal<\/em>\u00a0patriotic Americans.<\/em><\/p>\n

Normal people \u2013 regular, fair-minded, live-and-let-live, law-abiding citizens with traditional values: work hard, save your money, play by the rules, help other people, don\u2019t spend more than you have. These are the people being labeled \u201ccannibals,\u201d \u201cvampires\u201d and \u201cterrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

On cable news, pundit after pundit could be heard parroting the day\u2019s talking points, likening tea-party folk to terrorists.<\/p>\n