By Ben R. Williams
Two days before Christmas, a number of folks in Martinsville held a “Visibility Brigade” on the Franklin Street bridge protesting President Donald Trump.
I learned about this protest when I read about it on the RBS News Now Facebook page (a shoutout to my buddy Luis Romero, whom I first met when I was a full-time reporter and he was just starting out in his journalism career — he’s doing great work).
I had expected the comments on the story to be negative, but somehow, I still wasn’t braced for the sheer venom I witnessed.
There were, of course, comments mocking the physical appearance of the protesters, along with comments suggesting they all get jobs. For the record, all of the people at the protest that I personally know are gainfully employed.
But the comments went much darker than that. Multiple comments suggested that if the protesters truly wanted to improve our nation, they should jump off the Franklin bridge instead of gathering on it. At least one commenter out of the 600+ remarked that the protesters would “make good target practice.”
I only replied to one comment, a gentleman who said conservatives didn’t protest Biden’s Presidency. I asked him if the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection counted as a protest or not. The next day — Christmas Day, in fact — I got a personal message informing me that I was the scum of the earth. I was busy visiting with my grandma, so I just told him I hoped he had a good Christmas with his loved ones. I have yet to receive a reply.
You might expect this column to be about how these folks should feel ashamed for their cruel and violent comments, especially in the days leading up to the holiday celebrating the birth of Christ. Believe me, that would be a waste of words. For so many now, their faith in Christ is so deeply intertwined with their faith in Donald Trump that the two are essentially indistinguishable, and I don’t think most of them would disagree with me.
No, the message of this column is for the progressives out there, which, conveniently enough, are about the only folks who still read my column.
Do not allow yourselves to be seduced by the comforting lie that this will all go back to normal once Trump leaves office. That is never going to happen.
When I was in the tenth grade, Jay Cardo, one of my favorite English professors, had us read Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” a brilliant novel I was a bit too young to fully wrap my head around. There is one part, though, that has always stuck with me.
In the novel, our protagonist Yossarian’s friend Snowden is injured after their plane is struck by anti-aircraft fire. Yossarian carefully bandages Snowden’s serious leg injury, only to notice that Snowden is also bleeding near his armpit. He tears open Snowden’s flak suit to reveal that a chunk of flak has punched clean through Snowden’s torso, mortally wounding him.
It’s a horrific concept, the idea of carefully tending to a treatable wound only to then discover that the mortal wound is hiding right below the surface. It’s also, unfortunately, an excellent metaphor for our current moment.
Donald Trump is not the disease that’s rotting America from the inside out. He’s merely the most visible symptom of it. It’s true that Trump is doing his level best to divide Americans into factions, but it’s also true that he never could have risen to political prominence if America hadn’t already been deeply divided.
When did it all start? I can give you the exact day: August 4, 1987. That was the day that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed the Fairness Doctrine in a 4-0 vote. Established in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine had required that holders of broadcast licenses present controversial issues of public importance AND that they do so in a way that fairly reflected different viewpoints.
The Fairness Doctrine wasn’t perfect, but its repeal had disastrous consequences. It’s no coincidence that Rush Limbaugh got his start in AM talk radio the year after. Fox News could not have existed while the Fairness Doctrine was in place, nor could OAN or Newsmax. There are other factors at play — there always are — but you can draw a direct line between one fateful decision in the summer of 1987 and our present moment, in which the media we consume allows the American people to live in two completely different and diametrically opposed realities.
What’s the solution to this nearly 40 year old problem?
If I knew the answers to questions like that, I’d be driving a much nicer car with far fewer miles on it. But it strikes me that if you don’t like the way things are going in your country, the first step toward fixing it is pointing it out. For example, with a protest.
To quote Catch-22, “The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”