I’m a recovering Jewish conservative Republican who, prior to that, was a recovering Jewish liberal Democrat. I guess that means that I may be reverting to being a Jewish liberal Democrat—except not quite yet.
My current muddled state is reflected in how I react to today’s polarized paranoid media malaise.
Four or eight years ago, I would not even bothered to have watched the Democratic Convention. Last night, I did and actually derived guilty enjoyment from the over-the-top partisan hype. This despite the fact that the admirable and politically effective Michelle Obama is not quite as she is portrayed by the liberal media as a combination of Joan of Arc and Wonder Woman, and Despicable Donald Trump can’t be quite as despicable as Senator Elizabeth Warren makes him out to be. Nor is Uncle Bernie Sanders really the second coming of a cross between John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.
On the other hand, the conservative media I used to read have become bad and deranged almost beyond being readable. Perusing the Drudge Report is like taking a mud bath with no therapeutic value. PJ Media gives us the sad spectacle of the fine historian Victor Davis Hanson repeating over and over again that it is OK to vote for Donald Trump because, however awful he may be a president, he cannot do anything worse than Barack Obama has already done. Several other political hacks explain that Vlad Putin has done us a service by hacking the DNC emails and thereby revealing that Hillary Clinton is a paper tigress. The once insightful Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit is unaware that he needs an exorcism, having been possessed by the crackpot spirit of Westbrook Pegler of the McCarthy Era.
Without a political home, I guess I have become just another unmoored Wandering Jew floating in the ideological flotsam and jetsam of our time. Is this is how it felt being a hapless observer during the decline of the Roman Empire? Mercifully, history has accelerated so that our decline won’t last as long.
