Divisive Politics in Action

“In the current polarized political climate, we thought it would be interesting to ask which presidents were considered by presidency experts to be the most polarizing. To do so, we asked respondents to identify up to five individual presidents they believed were the most polarizing, and then rank order them with the first president being the most polarizing, the second as next most polarizing, and so on. We then calculated how many times a president was identified as well as their average ranking. The results of this question can be seen in the table below.

Donald Trump is by far the most polarizing of the ranked presidents earning a 1.6 average (1 is a “most polarizing” ranking). Lincoln is the second most polarizing president of those presidents ranked. He earned a 2.5 ranking. This is close to Polk as the second most polarizing president at 2.6. Trump was ranked “most polarizing” by 95 respondents and second most polarizing by 20 respondents. For comparison, Lincoln, the second most polarizing president on average, received 20 “most polarizing” rankings and 15 second “most polarizing” rankings.” Source: Official Results of the 2018 Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey, Brandon Rottinghaus, University of Houston; Justin S. Vaughn, Brookings Institution

In the wake of slaughter after two mass shootings in recent days, the president blames the media for polarizing and upsetting people. One source writes: “President Trump shifted blame to the media in the aftermath of three mass shootings, accusing the press of fueling the ‘anger and rage’ that has contributed to the atrocities in recent years. ‘The Media has a big responsibility to life and safety in our Country,’ he tweeted Monday. ‘Fake News has contributed greatly to the anger and rage that has built up over many years.’”

One GOP member of congress blames liberals, drag queen advocates, homosexual marriage, open borders and Barack Obama: “In the Facebook post, Ohio Rep. Candice Keller complained about liberals playing the ‘blame game’ after every shooting and asked why not place the blame where it belongs.”

Wait!! What about the facts?: Some people may note that the president's rhetoric may seem just a wee bit out of synch with reality here. Relevant facts (not opinion) here include these:

1. Conservative political rhetoric has been fomenting lies, rage, hate, bigotry, unwarranted fear and unwarranted distrust on the right at least since the 1980s with the rise of poison darts including Newt Gingrich, Lee Atwater, the Koch brothers, and many Evangelical religious leaders.
2. The leader of the modern GOP, the president, is ranked by some experts as the most polarizing president in US history (they also ranked him the least great of all US presidents).
3. The leader of the GOP is a chronic liar,[1] arguably the most dishonest president in US history.
4. The leader of the GOP hates the American free press, repeatedly calling them the enemy of the state, which is the same kind of rhetoric that the murdering tyrant Joseph Stalin applied to people and institutions he didn't like and obliterated by force, something that, based on his public statements, our president would enthusiastically do if he could.

So, on the one hand one has the GOP reality based on comments from our liar president and some lying GOP politicians, the few with the guts to say anything at all, blaming anything except themselves. On the other hand, we have reality, which does not appear to overlap much with the GOP reality.

Which reality is the most fact-based of the two?

Footnote:
1. As used here, liar includes both lies and BS. Lies are intentional deceit, while BS are false statements that may or may not be true because the speaker doesn't care about truth or facts and is only trying to persuade regardless of what is true and what is a lie.

B&B orig: 8/5/19