POLITICAL TONG WARS.

AuthorBresler, Robert J.
PositionNATIONAL AFFAIRS

TONG WARS refers to the brutal internecine gang wars in San Francisco's Chinatown of the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The 1906 earthquake put an end to this nonsense--destroying the city's brothels, opium dens, and gambling houses, the control over which the gangs brutalized each other. Will it take that kind of calamity to silence the persistent political Tong Wars we are being put through?--trouble is, many relish this disgusting political spectacle.

Twitter and Facebook are catnip to blow-hards, hotheads, know-it-alls, and late-night alcoholics. They give new opportunities for bloated and deranged egos which cannot survive without public attention. The journalistic profession has jumped in with relish and debased itself. Witness the endless parade in the 24-hour cable news cycle of opinionated political hacks who call themselves strategists. In place of serious reporters digging for news, we have self-important commentators braying like donkeys on the same network, each with the same opinion, hour after hour. Gone are the measured and respected voices of yesteryear--Walter Lippmann, Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Elmer Davis, Erwin Canham, and Ali stair Cooke.

If the problem merely was pompous broadcasters and obsessive Facebook and Twitter users, it would not shake the republic. However, the trouble is more serious and deeper than this media spectacle. These voices--as obnoxious as they can be--are a symptom. They reflect profound political divisions. There are so few moderate voices in the media because there are so few such voices among our political leaders. For example, past Republican presidents and presidential candidates from Dwight Eisenhower to Mitt Romney kept their political rhetoric within the bounds of common decency and decorum.

Pres. Donald Trump is a different animal. One can agree with many of his positions and still blanch as he delights in taunting and inflaming the opposition. During the presidential campaign debates, he relished in humiliating and degrading his political opponents--Republican and Democrat. As president, he continues the same disregard for public decorum. Loyalty means little. He even unloads on Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General and earliest political supporter.

With his addiction to Twitter, hardly a day goes by when Trump does not go after someone, often in the most personal way. He tempts his critics to get down in the mud with him. Much of Democratic opposition accepts the temptation...

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