Category Archives: Polarization

Has the newest American Civil War started?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate, Pluralism, Polarization

 

 

Ignatieff pointed out when he first published Blood and Belonging in 1993 that federal states were all having trouble remaining unified.  He mentioned of course, Yugoslavia which was in the act of breaking up violently.  It actually had 5 Civil Wars in quick succession. All of them violent. But he also mentioned Canada which was facing strong chances of breaking up with the rise of Quebec nationalism. He also mentioned that most other federal states, such as India, Belgium and the former USSR were also facing challenges to thier  federal system.

 

Of course, since then things have got worse. Canada is now facing a threat to its union by Alberta in addition to Quebec. More importantly, the United States which is also a federal state but was not on his list of trouble federal states is now clearly in that camp as many of its so-called red states and blue-states seem to find living together increasingly difficult. Federalism is a political system designed to permit people to live together even though they have some pretty big differences without breaking up.  Such a system did not allow Yugoslavia to stay together. I would add another factor that is challenging federal states, and this is the rise of polarization. Polarization is clearly affecting federal states by driving its elements apart.

 

One of the regular political commentators I read, even though I often disagree with him, is Thomas Friedman, who has won 3 Pulitzer prizes.  That is pretty outstanding for a journalist. I read an article by him this week in the New York Times  in which he said this about his country, “in my view, we are in a new civil war over a place called home.” He thinks the United States is already in the midst of Civil War!   Last year I watched a film called Civil War, about an imagined Civil War in the United States. It was horrifying. Is that what the US is facing?  Even if it is not that kind of a break-up we have to ask, ‘What is happening to the United States?’

It’s horrifying about sums it up.

Nationalism and Pluralism

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Extremism, Hate, Moral Humility, Pluralism, Polarization, Serbia

 

I think we all know what nationalism is. It has been with us much longer than pluralism. Unfortunately, it is also much more common than nationalism.

 

Nationalism is usually considered an ideology which emphasizes loyalty to a particular nation. It can be a force for good. Often it is a force for bad. It often promotes devotion to one’s own country above all.  The lates strong iteration of it, is the MAGA movement in the US. Make America great again. Or for those who already think it is a great, make it greater.  America First would be a more important principle for American nationalists. When it leads to feelings of superiority it has usually gone too far. A strong love of one’s own country is a natural feeling and unobjectionable.  But feelings of superiority are often unjustified and not very productive.

 

Pluralism is the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a society, where different groups, interests, and beliefs coexist and interact peacefully. It sees strength in diversity which all can benefit from. It not only tolerates diverse views, and even peoples, it celebrates in diversity. Respect of other cultures is essential to the philosophy of pluralism.  Feelings of superiority are an anathema. Nationalism can be a fierce opponent of pluralism. In such a case, in my view, nationalism has gone too far. Pluralism is incompatible with extremism. You can one but not both. Pluralism is born out humility.

 

The struggle between nationalism and pluralism is often fraught. For example, recent examples close to home, are the relationship between Quebec and its separatists, who want to form the independent, or sovereign nation, as they like to call it, of Quebec. In Canada, Alberta is the latest example of where feelings are tending towards separation. How far those feelings will lead that province are not known.

 

In Yugoslavia feelings of pluralism were swamped by nationalism, except in those states where a yearning for separation by smaller groups  prevailed. After their leader Tito died, many Croats wanted to have Croatia secede from Yugoslavia. At the same time, Serbians within Croatia did not want to secede because they felt they would become a minority in the new country, when they had been a majority in power in Yugoslavia. As well, some Slovenians wanted to secede from Yugoslavia, and that was opposed by the Croats within as well as Serbians.

 

The struggle for separate national states often leads to serious political problems. It can, and has, frequently led to serious conflict. Around the world people have come to favor nationalism at the expense of pluralism. That is usually a serious mistake. In the former Yugoslavia after the death of Tito, clearly nationalism had the floor. Pluralism seemed dead. Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, all wanted to be sovereign states even if violence was the only way to achieve it.

 

There was no credible force for pluralism.  I often quote William Butler Yeats who described this phenomena well: The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” Serbia claimed to be the leader for unity of the states, but all the others lacked confidence that its claims were not based solely on its interest in dominating the other states. No one argued for all for one and one for all that is the precondition pluralism requires.

Pluralism was dead; war of all against all commenced. And the people suffered.

The Water Tower: A Symbol of Resistance

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate, Modern History, Polarization, Political Violence

Our guide Marda led us on a fascinating walk through the town of Vukovar in Croatia. This town in 1991 was at the time the sight of the largest siege since the Second World War. Frankly, I expected to see more war-ravaged buildings, but most of them had been cleaned up. I don’t blame them for cleaning it up. Nobody wants to walk through devastation permanently (except me). And it has been more than 30 years since the war ended.

 

The first building we saw, from a distance, was the water tower which had become the symbol of the resistance of brave Croatians to the 3-month Serbian siege. The Croatians see it as symbol of their glorious resistance, defiance, and, they think, invincibility.  I consider such ideas hubris. After the war, it was one of the very few buildings (some say only one) left standing.  And that was truly remarkable since it had been subjected to barrage from the 1st day of the siege to the last, 87 days later.

There are images of the tower that can be purchased in gift shops for tourists. Souvenirs of the war. Go figure.

The Water Tower as a symbol of the defence of Vukovar was officially adopted on 30 October 2020, and is illuminated in the colours of the Croatian flag, with the lyrics of the Croatian anthem.

From day 1 of the siege , each and every day of the siege, the Serbians tried to demolish the tower with gunfire, and amazingly, if not miraculously as the locals think, it stood. It was hit with bullets but never collapsed. In fact, it was hit 640 times in 87 days. The people of the town took its durability as a message of their own durability and that of their town. They thought, that as long as the tower was there the Town would stand.

 

There is another amazing element to this story. Each day 2 young men, Ivica Ivanika and his friend Hrvoje Džalto took it upon themselves, to climb to the top of the tower,  at night in the dark without flashlights, to avoid getting shot. They climbed up the tower in order place  a new undamaged and sacred flag of Croatia to replace the one filled with Serbian bullet holes. The two men were scared every time they climbed up, thinking they might be shot. But every night they succeeded. It took about an hour and half to climb up and back down again, but they did it every day, religiously.

 

The stairs were not in perfect condition.  Entire rows of stairs were missing. No one had asked them to do this. They just did it. Sometimes they climbed in the middle of fierce fighting. They usually started around midnight. And every day the Serbs shot the flag down, and every night the two young men replaced the destroyed flag. Soldiers said that everyday their spirits were boosted as a result.

 

Unfortunately, Ivica Ivanika lost his life shortly before the town fell to the Serbs. After the fall of the city, Hrvoje Džalto was taken prisoner and much later exchanged, but he died before the opening of the renovated Tower. They are the heroes of the town.

 

Today, the tower has been converted into a museum with a restaurant. Traces of the war are still evident. And they are leaving those marks as a reminder. I appreciated that.

 

I think it is important to remember what happened there. It was a place where brothers turned murderous.

 

Sadly that can happen. It can happen anywhere. That is what we must remember.

Warlords for Dangerous Times

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Extremism, Fear, Modern History, Pluralism, Polarization, Political Violence, Vigilantism

 

Tony Judt  described what happened in Yugoslavia when the country split up into many tiny pieces after the wars of the 1990s ruled by small men: “These were little more than organized bands of thugs and criminals.” Michael Ignatieff in his wonderful book, Blood and Belonging, said this about what happened when the warlords took over:

 

“Elegant episcopal palaces and monasteries, delicately arcaded squares left behind by the Austro-Hungarians, lie in ruins. Time has slid back five centuries. One of the richest and most civilized parts of Europe has returned to the barbarism of the late Middle Ages. Such law and order as there is, is administered by warlords.”

 

Countries such as Canada and the US, both federations like Yugoslavia, in which people had lived together for many decades, should pay attention. All this could happen here.

 

They were harrowing times. One might have asked what was Ignatieff was  doing there in such dangerous circumstances? He explored it driving through the country and everywhere he saw young men with rifles demanding obeisance or money or both. If you saw the recent film Civil War about what might happen in the US you will know what it looks like, namely,

 

“The ones I began meeting at the checkpoints on the roads leading off from the Highway of Brotherhood and Unity [that joined Zagreb and Belgrade] during Tito’s Yugoslavia and they were short, stubby men who in a former life had been small-time hoods, small-town cops [amazing how similar they can be] or both.  Spend a day with them, touring their world and you’d hardly know that most of them are serial killers.

 

Warlords not only dominate the war zones; they have worked their way to the heart of power in the authoritarian single-party states of Croatia and Serbia alike.

 

War criminals are celebrities in the Balkans. They have seats in the Serbian Parliament… Arkan [-one of these warlord] controls an eight-hundred strong paramilitary unit called the Tigers, who raped and tortured their way through eastern Slavonia in the Croatian war of 1991.  This odious thug, on the run from an Interpol warrant for an attempted murder in Sweden, is a parliamentary deputy and operates a number of immensely profitable sanctions-busting businesses…Ever the post-modern Prince of Darkness.”

 

 

The peculiar thing though was that these warlords, and their followers all claimed to be working for their “country”. That of course, meant the “country” that had broken away from Yugoslavia. These were the reduced nations to which they now claimed to owe allegiance.  As a result, they considered themselves, nationalists. Ignatieff agreed that the force that was driving them was nationalism, but was it? Is that an accurate description? As he said,

 

“The warlords are nationalists, but their convictions are uninteresting.  They are technicians of violence, rather than ideologues.  Earlier than everybody else they had understood that ethnic nationalism had delivered the ordinary people of the Balkans straight back to the pre-political state of nature, where Hobbes predicted, life is nasty, brutish, and short. In the state of nature, the man with a Zastava machine pistol and a Cherokee Chief is king.  For he can provide the two commodities everybody here craves security and vengeance.

 

Once the Yugoslav Communist state began to spin apart into its constituent national particles, the key question soon became:  Will the local Croat policeman protect me if I am a Serb?  Will I keep my job in the soap factory if my new boss is Serb or a Muslim?  The answer to these questions was no, because no state remained to enforce the old inter-ethnic bargain.  As a result, every individual rushed, pell-mell, to the next available source of protection:  the warlord.

 

For the warlord not only offers protection.  He offers a solution.  He tells his people:  If we cannot trust our neighbours, we must rid ourselves of them.  If we cannot live together in a single state, we must create clean states of our own. The logic of ethnic cleansing is not just motivated by national hatred.  Cleansing is warlord’s coldly rational solution to the war of all against all.  Rid yourself of your neighbors, the warlord says, and you no longer have to fear them. Live among your own, and you can live in peace.  With me and my boys to protect you.”

 

It was really a protection racket. Pay up or we will kill you. Pretty blunt demands.  No room for nuance. Pay or die. It was often that simple. And if you belonged to the wrong group, you had no choice. You just died.

 

Of course, this is entirely the wrong approach. In modern societies people are mobile and quickly mover around the world. In each place, people must learn to live together with other people who are different from who you are—we call this pluralism. That is who we much learn to live. Belonging without the blood. Either that or say hello to the warlords.

Brothers at Each Other’s Throats

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Democracy, Extremism, Fear, Hate, Modern History, Pluralism, Polarization, Populism

 

The problem in the north of Yugoslavia was not so much resurfacing of ancient hatreds, or religious or linguistic differences, as it was economic nationalism. The northerners were producing most of the wealth of the country and felt that much of this wealth was being siphoned off by their poorer southern cousins. They were starting to believe in the north that they would all be better off as independent countries. Sounds a lot like Alberta doesn’t it? Resentment is often fuel of strife.

 

The Communist leader, Tito, had managed to suppress such serious criticisms during his life time, but as soon as he was gone such critiques flourished.

The economy of Yugoslavia had seriously unraveled during the 1980s.  The country moved into hyperinflation.  By 1989 the inflation rate was 1,240 % and rising.  These were conditions in which tensions were incubated into vigorously nasty animosities. As Tony Judt another brilliant historian said, in his book about Europe after the Second World War, “the growing distaste for feckless southerners was ethnically indiscriminate and based not on nationality but on economics.”

 

The ruling centres of former communist enclaves in Belgrade, Serbia, were also spectacularly corrupt. When these led to financial ruin, the people were ready to revolt.  These feelings were intensified by fears that a small group of former Communist apparatchiks coalescing around the brute Slobodan Milošević were planning to make a bid for power in the political vacuum that followed Tito’s death.  That is exactly what happened. He gained power by arousing and manipulating Serb national emotions.  Like Trump decades later, he was a master of that. Many Communist leaders had tried similar tactics in other countries.  As Judt said, “In the era of Gorbachev, with the ideological legitimacy of Communism and its ruling party waning fast, patriotism offered an alternative way of securing a hold on power.” Or as Samuel Johnson said, “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

 

In Yugoslavia however, Milošević and his cronies encouraged nationalist meetings at which the insignia of wartime Chetniks were on public display and this aroused deep disquiet among those groups that had been abused by the Chetniks during the war. The Chetniks were the Serbs who had fought on the side of Hitler during the war, using that opportunity to commit mayhem and destruction. Riding a wave of Serbian nationalism, Milošević was confirmed in power as the President of the Serbian republic in 1989.

Milošević wanted to forge a more unitary Serbian state. No more wimpy federalism. Like so many autocrats before and after him, he used nationalism as an instrument to cement his power. After all, he told his fellow Serbs, we are just taking what is rightly ours.  He could have said, I just want to make Serbia great again.

Naturally the other 4 republics were not so keen on Serbian domination. In Slovenia and Croatia, they saw only one way out from such domination, secession. Unlike other Communist countries where the former powerful Communists had no internal ethnic divisions on which to prey when their political power waned, in Serbia those divisions were exploited for the personal gain of the former Communist power brokers. As Judt said, “The country offered fertile opportunities for demagogues like Milošević, or Franjo Tudjman, his Croat counterpart.”  The problem as Judt saw it was that, “in Yugoslavia, the break-up of the federation into its constituent republics would in every case except Slovenia leave a significant minority or group of minorities stranded in someone else’s country.”  Then when one republic declared itself independent its neighbours quickly fell like dominoes.

 

Milošević was the first Yugoslav politician to break Tito’s ban on the mobilization of ethnic consciousness.’  He liked to portray himself as the defender of Yugoslavia against the secessionist longings of Croatia and Slovenia, and, ominously, as the avenger of old wrongs done to Serbs. He wanted to build a greater Serbia on the ruins of old Yugoslavia, but with Serb domination. Milošević was quite capable of inciting Serb minorities in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Kosovo to rise up and demand Serb protection.  In fact, that was his favoured technique.  The Serbs in these other republics to a large extent merely served as Milošević’s pretext for his expansionary designs.

 

Although most Serbs at the time displayed little nationalistic paranoia, and even less interest in distant Serbs, Milošević transformed their vague memories into rabid fears and paranoia that Serbs spread around the old Yugoslavia were about to be annihilated by the majority in their republics. Milošević, in other words, used these fears to further his demagogic purposes. He used the oldest trick in the playbook of wanna be autocrats–manufactured fear. Trump does it all the time.

 

Milošević did not invent the fears.  They grew up naturally when Yugoslavia disintegrated, as every national group feared they were endangered as a minority in some republic. So, for example, the Serbs, as the largest minority group in Croatia, they felt particularly vulnerable. He did not make up the fears, but he sure knew how to exploit them.

 

In the Slovene election in April of 1990 a government was elected that was still pro-Yugoslavia, but also highly critical of the Serbian government in Belgrade. In the following month of May a new nationalist party under its leader Tudjman came to power in Croatia. In December of that year Milošević seized, without authorization, 50% of the entire drawing rights of the Yugoslav federation in order to pay back pay and bonuses for federal employees. Again economics, as always, was a crucial factor in developments that often wore an ethnic or religious disguise. In January of 1991 the Slovenia government declared independence.   Within a month the Croats did the same thing. Soon the Parliament of Macedonia did the same thing.

 

The hasty recognition of the independent states by Europe, especially, Germany, perhaps were not helpful. When an independent Croatia was formed, political leaders in the Serbian capital of Belgrade began to play on the fears of Serbians with outrageous propaganda on radio and television.  This helped to invoke in the Serbs memories of massacres in World War II and prompted those Serbs to rise up in revolt against their ‘Ustache’ neighbours. The Ustache had been seen as traitors in the Second World War who supported the Nazis and did their best to exterminate the Serbs, so now the Serb minorities feared, a repeat, not entirely without  justification.

The Serb minorities in these states were deeply worried.  Clashes with authorities followed. They called upon Belgrade to help them against their ‘Ustache’ oppressors.

When Serbs were dismissed from their positions in the police force, judiciary, and military, many thought the Croats might be setting the table for another massacre. They believed they might be seeing the return of a an ethnic state with a genocidal past. Croats denied that this was the case, but there were some reasons for this angst. When Serb police were fired, Serbs armed themselves as militia. When the Croats were unable to maintain order, the Yugoslav national army, under the direction of Serbs from Belgrade stepped in at first to restore order, and later to obliterate Croatian independence. As Michael Ignatieff said, , “War was the result of an interacting spiral of Serbian expansionism, Croat independence, and Serbian ethnic paranoia in Croatia.”

 

Even though the Americans claimed to support a democratic and unified Yugoslavia, as Judt said, by then “a ‘democratic and unified Yugoslavia was an oxymoron.’” There really was no room for democracy.  Slovenia and Croatia took active measures to implement their independence by actually unilaterally seceding from the federation.  They enjoyed the tacit support of a number of European leaders.  The Serbs responded by moving the national Yugoslav army to the borders.

Although the Serbs and their army, the Yugoslav National Army bear the primary responsibility for what happened, since they hurled 150,000 shells into Croatia from the surrounding hills, but Croats were not without blame. They dynamited parts of the great city as they left so there would be nothing left for their Serb brothers. These are the type of things you can expect when all sides seem to be represented by their loudest and most extreme voices.

Unfortunately, all around us today this seems to be happening.  We had best be alert.

 

The Demise of the Fairness Doctrine and the birth of the politics of Resentment

Extremism, Polarization, Right-wing Extremism

 

Jen Senko said her father got “brain-washed” by all this right-wing extremism.   He had been a Democrat but he, like so many others, became “a Reagan Democrat.” In fact, he became a Republican, because after watching right-wing media continuously, he found he had been wrong for all those years. He had stopped watching news from Walter Cronkite and other such news providers and switched entirely to Fox News.  Fox News became his Bible for news. And Fox News shaped her Dad there was no doubt about that. Whether that amounted to brainwashing was of course another matter.

 

The odd thing was her father Frank Senko actually flipped his previous values and turned against what Jen Senko saw as the core of his being and identity. It was that profound a change.

 

Part of this change in her Dad occurred as a consequence of the removal of the “fairness doctrine.” How can removing fairness do that?

 

The so-called “Fairness Doctrine” in the US required American media to broadcast news in the public interest. It operated for 40 years and in 1949 was voted in as law by the US Congress.  It was effective until 1987. As Thom Hartmann said, “as a result radio and television stations had real news.”

 

It did not require equality of all views. That would have been impossible, but it did require media to recognize that it had to consider views other than their own or that of their owners. If people felt their views were not being considered they could complain to the station and if that did not give relief one could complain to the FCC who might give relief and force the station to include more views.

 

The doctrine was dropped by the Reagan administration. They saw it as unnecessary government interference. This resulted in an explosion of talk radio in the US. And the gloves were off. No more mealy-mouthed opinions. Extreme views were not just tolerated, they were encouraged. Americans loved those extreme views.

 

Talk radio started off as local radio but eventually some of them went national, starting with Rush Limbaugh in 1988, immediately after the demise of the fairness doctrine. Fairness was government interference.

 

As Steve Rendall, a senior magazine writer said,

“In 1987 I couldn’t believe what I heard. I heard over and over again gutter racism,’ and this was coming from different talk show hosts, but the main man was Bob Grant. I heard black people referred to as ‘savage.’

 

Other racial slurs were common.

 

As Rendall said,

“The allure of the Limbaughs and the Grants was that they tapped into a kind of resentment and a kind of insecurity on the part of mostly white men, and in large part, of aging white men. A kind of injured pride.  A feeling that the world is passing them by. It’s typical of demagoguery. That your problems aren’t really caused by you. They are caused by these other people that aren’t like us.”

 

It is all their fault. Men like Jen Senkow’s father at this stuff up. Jeff Cohen put it this way: “Talk radio was always in the hands of right-wing backlash artists.”

 

Or as Rendall said, “A bunch of white guys on the right railing against the women’s movement, the civil rights movement…”

The American right-wing was unleashed. Good-bye namby-pamby. Hello polarization. Because, of course, extremism on one side always gives birth to extremism on the other side.  And America would never be the same again.

 

 

The Effects of the Powell Memo

Extremism, Polarization, Right-wing Extremism

 

The Powell memorandum impacted law, media, business, politics and education, in many ways.

The groups had meetings where issues of all kinds that were important to those on the right could be discussed. The issues ranged from fur trade commission, restricting rights of gays and lesbians and their ilk, de-regulation of businesses, gun deregulation, anti-tax, anti-immigrants, pro-lifers, evangelicals and many more.  Many of those issues are still important issues, except perhaps the fur trade. The genius of the meetings was that they provided a broad tent where all kinds of people appeared who often did not agree with each other on much, but they learned to like each and spread their respective gospels. These meetings benefited many right-wing groups.

 

Conservative think tanks exploded around the country. The Heritage Foundation was established in 1973, 2 years after the Powell memorandum was created.

One thing these groups established was balance in the media.  In other words, media need no longer be objective, as had always been the goal, now instead, media would be balanced. For example, if a newspaper wanted to cover the issue of climate change it must give an opportunity to both sides of the debate to be heard. This sounds pretty good, but it had flaws. For example, even if 99% of scientists agreed that climate change was real and was caused by activities of humans, if a media outlet wanted to report on the issue it had to give a platform for both sides. This gave far too much weight to crackpot ideas often funded by industries affected, such as the oil and gas sector. They managed to have their minority views get equal time with independent science. As a result these views received much more attention than they should have received. “Balance” really did not work well in practice.

In fact, this helped to establish the age of extremism and polarization in which we now live.

There was a large group of meetings led by Grover Norquist who founded Americans for Tax Reform and The Americans for Tax Reform Foundation to lobby governments to reduced taxes on wealthy business people and provided education opportunities for people with the right views.

When Hillary Clinton complained about “a vast right-wing conspiracy” she actually had a point. When you look at the vast number of right-wing organizations from legal foundations to media organizations, to think tanks, to advocacy groups, and many others, the network was indeed vast. Some called the Norquist Meetings the headquarters of the right-wing conspiracy. Personally, I don’t like to call this movement a conspiracy, but it was clearly a growing movement, well-funded and supported by American business interests.

Felon

criminal Justice, Law, Polarization, politics, Trump, Trumpism

 

I admit it. I am shocked. Earlier today, I predicted to friends that I believed Donald Trump would be acquitted of all 34 charges against him. The verdict is in. Donald Trump, the president of the United States,  is a convicted felon. I was dead wrong!  I freely admit it. The jury found him guilty on all charges.  I admit I could not be happier and believed he richly deserved this defeat. The American jury system stepped up and did its job. I underestimated it.

 

We must remember that this is Trump’s second jury trial. The first jury ruled that he was responsible for sexually abusing a woman, even though he had vigorously denied it outside of court. Though of course, he chose not to testify under oath and subject to cross examination even after promising he would testify. Effectively the jury in a civil case said he was guilty of sexual abuse! That is a very serious conclusion. That jury reached that verdict by a majority decision of jurors after hearing all of the evidence, listening and considering the cross examination of the witnesses by expert expensive lawyers, and listening to arguments from lawyers for both sides.

This second trial was different. It was a criminal trial. The first trial was decided on the basis of a preponderance of the evidence. The second trial had to be decided by a unanimous jury on each of the 34 charges. And the second jury had to believe Trump was guilty on a higher standard of proof, namely, proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  Basically, they had to decide he was undoubtedly guilty based on the evidence.  Again, the jury had to carefully listen to all of the evidence, not just statements from Trump or statements from the prosecutors or liberal commentators. The jurors listened to all the evidence and all of which was subject to cross examination by the best lawyers money can buy. That of course is the money of the Trumpsters that was donated to Trump. Reputedly that was in the millions of dollars paid by campaign contributions. Again, the jury had to listen to arguments from both lawyers for the prosecution and defence. The jury listened to instructions about the law from a judge who is trained and experienced to be impartial and fair.

This is not fake news. This is fact.  Donald J. Trump the ex-president of the United States is a convicted felon. The second jury decided that Donald Trump knowingly paid hush money to a porn star to silence her in order to keep that information from the American electors and then falsified the business records to accomplish this goal. They had to believe he intended to cover up a crime for each of the charges.

Once again Trump decided not to testify under oath subject to cross examination, contrary to his promises. Each day (or many days) at the end of the day during the trial, he chose instead to speak not under oath and not subject to rules of law about what could be said, and not subject to cross examination, but outside the courtroom to reporters. He did not present any evidence to support his claims that the trial was rigged and the judge was corrupt. None. He just made the statements. The witnesses for the prosecution on the other hand, were each cross examined, in some cases brutally and at great length, by experienced lawyers.

Again, none of this is fake news.  CNN did not make this up. It is real.

America is a badly divided country. Millions of people believed Trump’s lies and as a result the country is deeply polarized about this man, but it is time for the division to stop. It is time for Trumpsters who have supported him through thick and thin to concede defeat and admit they were wrong. We all make mistakes.  I just admitted to making a big one in this post. They should give up and support President Biden even if they sincerely believed Trump was the better option. We all make mistakes. His supporters all made a big one. They supported Trump. It is time for his supporters to end the division in America for the good of the country and admit they were mistaken and that everyone should now support Biden.