It's A Big Club.

The American voting public is fighting a political war with a fanaticism the leaders who started it don't have. Recent events are reminders not to sacrifice yourself to one part of a machine.

by Torraine Walker

It's rare when former American presidents have the opportunity to get together in the same room, publicly anyway. One of those circumstances is the death of one of them. The funeral of Jimmy Carter last week saw George W. Bush, Barack Obama and incoming president Donald Trump all attending his memorial service in Washington DC.

What surprised people were the more than cordial interactions between Obama and Trump, who seemed to be sharing private jokes and enjoying each other's company. This is definitely different from the narrative the American public was given during this last election, where Donald Trump was portrayed as the second coming of Satan and the reincarnation of Hitler, a pariah to be shunned and avoided by all morally upright human beings.

However, political reality doesn't allow for cut and dry divisions of good and evil.

People are easily seduced by the idea that politicians on opposite sides of the political spectrum in America are mortal enemies. During this last election social media and punditry enhanced this idea to the point that people disowned family members and endured lonely holiday seasons because of political differences. The truth is, politicians always work together, even when they are at odds and a core component of this is political theatre. It's a tactic all politicians use, to consolidate support in their own ranks and to flex for their political opponents. Like the best theatre, it relies on the audience to believe it.

Sometimes the voting public believes it deeply and forget that they're watching theater, with the result being some of the histrionic displays of the last year. The public has the luxury of believing in black and white morality but the world of politics operates in shades of grey and it always will. Like any other theater, the real world waits outside of it and in the real world, moral absolutes don't last.

Once upon a time George W. Bush was considered the same type of monster that Trump is currently seen as but it's amazing the goodwill you can generate with a handful of peppermints. A few photo ops* was all it took to make the public see George W. Bush as a harmless uncle instead of the author of a war based on false intel that led to half a million Iraqi dead, the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The same with Obama. His booklist and playlist releases have gone a long way to smoothing over the killings of Black men by police and foreign policy decisions that reduced Libya to a major hub for a 21st Century slave trade on his watch. Of the five living current and ex-presidents, Trump has the fewest bodies but it's the fact that he has the least decorum that people focus on.

But even the disgust liberals feel about Trump will fade over time. The public has a very short attention span, especially for political acts that don't directly impact their wallets. Harm done to people in foreign countries and American neighborhoods that are out of sight and out of mind are easily forgotten. What people need to ask themselves is how many personal connections are they willing to sacrifice for political narratives that the people who created them don't follow?

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