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After President Barack Obamas inauguration in 2009, conservative talk host Rush Limbaugh made headlines when he said, I hope Obama fails. Many considered it a gauge of how bitter conservatives had become post-election.

Why would anyone, right or left, not want the new president to succeed?

The country was divided for a number of reasons then, but due in large part to too many conservatives drawing battle lines and retreating to the trenches.

Now, its the lefts turn.

In Sundays New York Post, gay Brooklyn-based journalist Chadwick Moore penned a thoughtful yet unsettling op-ed explaining why, although he had been a lifelong liberal, the lefts current intolerance has pushed him to the right. In September, Moore wrote a profile of hard right Breitbart provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos for the LGBT publication Out! For this unpardonable sin, he was shunned by his friends, even those he thought were genuinely close to him.

After a barrage of negative messages and attacks on social media, (neither the author nor the magazine signaled in any way that they agreed with Yiannopoulos controversial views), Moore wrote, I lay low for a week or so. Finally, I decided to go out to my local gay bar, where Ive been a regular for 11 years.

Nothing felt the same; half the place people with whom Id shared many laughs seemed to be giving me the cold shoulder, Moore lamented. A friend who normally greets me with a hug and kiss pivoted and turned away.

Moore continued: I realized that, for the first time in my adult life, I was outside of the liberal bubble and looking in. What I saw was ugly, lock step, incurious and mean-spirited. I began to realize that maybe my opinions just didnt fit in with the liberal status quo, which seems to mean that you must absolutely hate Trump, his supporters and everything they believe. If you dare to question liberal stances or make an effort toward understanding why conservatives think the way they do, you are a traitor.

Partisanship is not new, but left and right do seem to become shriller with each election. This has been particularly true in regard to perhaps the most uniquely polarizing president in modern American history, Donald Trump.

The division in 2017 compared to 2009 seems broader and deeper, something Chadwick Moores unfortunate experience illustrates. When the right was concocting every angry accusation imaginable against Obama, most dismissed it as right-wing propaganda from a conservative echo chamber.

But the current Trump hate presents a different and perhaps more troubling dynamic. Right now its not just progressive outlets, but the mainstream media that too often behaves like a liberal echo chamber.

So, if youre a left-leaning American already distraught over the election, and the mainstream media is telling you that Trump is an anti-gay white supremacist who hates MLK and wants to invade Mexico, how is this different from right-wingers who used to believe Obama was a secret-Kenyan-radical-Muslim-who-hated-America?

Because its what you already believe Trump really is, its what most of your friends believe, and most of the news you consume reinforces those biases.

Conservatives during the Obama era risked having their biases shattered the moment they turned off Fox News. Liberals right now are having their biases confirmed at every turn, which allows them to insist that what they believe genuinely reflects the unassailable truth about Trump.

They could be right. Trump is problematic on many levels. But how can liberals, living in so broad a bubble, truly know?

And if their intolerance toward anyone who dares challenge their worldview continues to increase, how will they ever know?

Go here to see the original:
What happened to tolerant liberals? - MyDaytonDailyNews