I made the mistake of responding to a leftist Jew I know very well on social media while on holiday in Italy last week.
She posted her deep respect for Democratic Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris on Facbook—accented by one of those glamour lithographs of the Democratic candidate —praying she’d win the Presidential election over her opponent Donald Trump.
I countered that it was surprising to me that any Jew would support Harris given her wishy-washy stance on the Hamas-Israeli conflict, her weak support of the Jewish state and her complete lack of response to the virulent and still ever-present tide of anti-Semitism in America and in Canada since last October 7.
I didn’t even mention the fact that Harris’ stepdaughter Ella Emhoff, 25, actively promoted donations to UNRWA this past March — a fact that the Democratic campaign has apparently tried to bury.
My reasoning was based on common sense and the concern that only a Trump presidency could address the global chaos. I pointed to his previous record during his first term during which he moved the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and initiated the Abraham Accords— striking diplomatic relations with the UAE and Bahrain.
I can’t vote. I know Trump has his faults. But I honestly believe he will be better for the future of America.
Well you would have thought I’d declared war on Liberal Jews.
For nearly 24 hours, my social media feed exploded — most of the users in Canada, but some living south of the border.
They questioned my morals and engaged in name calling.
They questioned how I could support a man with no ethics, especially being Jewish.
These alleged champions of women’s rights dismissed my years of political experience and flatly ignored my concerns about illegal immigrants crossing the border and raping and murdering women.
Stupidly I tried to present facts.
The more I did, the angrier and more aggressive they became.
At one point one seemingly entitled hateful woman —after being told I own a home in Florida and naturally I’m invested in U.S. politics even though I can’t vote— told me to back off because the election was none of my business.
Clearly they all had a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
It was indeed a sad but accurate portrayal of how media bias and indoctrination has poisoned the minds of low-information voters, how disconnected some voters are from reality and how the world is truly topsy-turvy.
Stupidly I thought that perhaps these so-called “informed” women would be as concerned as me about safety and the future of the Jewish state.
Nope. They were proof positive that visceral hate and emotions trump logic.
They were more concerned with proving me wrong and gaslighting me to back off.
After a good 12 hours of this online hate and seeing I would not bend to their way of thinking, the poster decided to block me.
But this was not before she apologized to her online “friends” and thanked them for their kindness and understanding while someone (me!) disrupted her “dinner party.”
I kid you not! She actually described her post as a “dinner party.”
The world has truly gone mad!
A week before our trip, a lesbian acquaintance of mine also blocked me for merely challenging the tiresome narrative and the inaccurate tropes that the media dish out about Trump and Republicans.
She seemed irked and even hurt that I was invading her echo chamber of like-minded uninformed voters.
But it didn’t just happen to me.
On a crowded train from Rome to Venice, Denise and I were forced to sit apart.
She was stuck in a set of seats with four women who also suffered from TDS.
My wife is the most patient and polite person imaginable.
I only heard snippets. But these women were ranting on about how awful Trump is —straight from the mouths of the biased pundits of MSNBC and CNN.
Denise tried to explain that she realizes —married to me—that all is not what it seems in the media and that media bias is rampant.
She, too, endeavoured to present them with facts.
But clearly that was a waste.
After disembarking she heard the women — who didn’t realize we were within earshot— talking about her and not necessarily in a flattering way.
Still I guess I was somewhat naive to think that TDS wouldn’t rear its ugly head this election as it did in 2016.
I guess I thought that the world had changed so much in eight years, that chaos is so rampant, our safety so in jeopardy, that anti-Semitism has grown at such a dizzying pace and the economy so in crisis that voters would have learned that the steak matters, not the sizzle.
But it is as it has been throughout my years of covering politics: voters’ memories can be extremely short and the left-wing media does an effective job of indoctrinating vulnerable minds.
I keep hoping that over the next six weeks logic and common sense will trump the gaslighting we see in the left-wing media.
The alternative is just too painful to imagine.
