Divergence

The Left was absolutely sure that the the leftward march begun by Barack Obama would continue. Democrats believed that despite her many flaws, Hillary was a slam dunk winner and would initiate policies that would converge with, rather than diverge from Barack Obama's. #Nevertrumpers on the GOP side believed that it was better to have Hillary Clinton as president than to have a GOP candidate who was not ideologically pure. Richard Fernandez suggests that the unhinged post-election rhetoric of almost all elites on both the Right and the Left  is due to one simple idea—divergence. He writes:

The tale really began in 2008, or to an even earlier when many Democrats refused to concede the 2000 presidential elections to George W. Bush. In each case the effects were similar, but growing in amplitude. "Not my president" replaced by "not your president". The 8 years of George Bush led to Barack Obama, determined to undo his predecessor and "fundamentally transform America". The 8 years of Obama have similarly led to Donald Trump who is equally determined to uproot what his predecessor planted.

Neither side appears ready to accept the legacy of the other. We have a series each step of which consists of undoing the previous term. The result is divergent. Each election creates a backlash which drives half the country away from the other half. There is no coming together in consensus but rather a growing drifting apart. What David Brooks offers with his vision of impeaching Trump within a year is more conflict, the same old, same old at a higher tempo. Why wait till 2020 when they can begin changing the president now? Why wait a year when you have now?

Stated more simply, the Left and the Right are moving further apart—diverging in their world view, their understanding of culture, their affinities, their leaders, and their overall approach to governance.

For the eleven years of its existence, the tag line of this blog has been: "The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts."
 
As both factions move further to the left or right, their lenses offers more than just distortion. It allows less and less reality to pass through. In actuality, Donald Trump, despite all of his negatives, is a political moderate—his lens might actually be far less distorted than the crazies of both ends of the political spectrum who oppose him. Both the Left and the Right are dying. The socialist model and its concomitant reliance on "fairness" and "diversity" has failed so often it has become a joke. The arch-conservative world view that applies social mores of the 1880s to the 21st century is no longer in step with modern times. Yet both endsw of the spectrum refuse to moderate their positions and attack Trump even before he has taken office because he represents a somewhat different approach.

Fernandez writes:

Perhaps time and history will bring a new beginning, a lasting consensus, another age that suits us all. No one can predict how the 21st century will develop. Perhaps humanity will go its several ways, divided into affinity groups, or even among the several planets. The one likely thing is the solution is probably not what we now imagine. All the pundits in the world couldn't even predict Trump. How can they know the future? All we know is that we are lost, but given time we will find a way. Humanity always has.

 But not before significant upheaval and sometimes, great pain.