Americans are bewildered and deeply troubled by today’s dangerous atmosphere of political hatred.  They’re at a loss to explain why so many are working so hard to destroy the man duly elected to lead the country, why they’re so determined to see him fail.

Venom is spewing from Hollywood, the news media, college campuses, sports arenas, and on our streets.  More ominously, political bias has appeared within the government agencies we all depend on for fair and apolitical dealings.

The mindless hatred in Hollywood isn’t really hard to understand.  One aging actor demeans Trump with the foulest words he can muster.  Another suggests that the president’s preadolescent son be caged with a pedophile.  Others in the Hollywood menagerie have imagined blowing up the White House or suggested the assassination of the president.  Their vitriol extends to anyone who even supports the president.  One gloating comic appeared on a late-night show where celebrities used to entertain their audiences with inane, but harmless personal anecdotes.  Now it seems they come to attack conservatives.  This one boasted about insulting Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in front of his two young boys.  Like Pavlov’s dogs, he was immediately rewarded with wild applause and guffaws.

Middle-America understands that most celebrities have no real interests in anything outside their world.  They look to their peers and their audiences to form their political opinions.  So the endless mimicry of foul insults, to most people, has become more annoying, and less meaningful than the squawking of a parrot in a pet store.

But while Hollywood eagerly contributes to the poisonous atmosphere, the real danger to our society is in the anti-America hate speech spewing from so many in the news media, and even from our elected representatives.  It is in the malfeasance by politicized government officials – malfeasance that many would call subversive.  It’s in the citizens who have been convinced that the President of the United States and everything he stands for is evil.    

These self-appointed arbiters of morality passionately beat their breasts over families who have been separated after breaking our immigration laws.  It never occurs to them that American parents who break the law are, just as appropriately, separated from their children when jailed or imprisoned.  Nor do they ever consider the growing number of foreign citizens who callously use their children, or the children of others, to evade our laws.  At the same time, they’re blind to the countless Americans killed by illegal aliens because of our weak immigration policies. 

By and large, they’re the very same moral authorities who shrug their shoulders at the hundreds of thousands of innocents disposed of each year under the “pro-choice” banner.

And while they’re continuously uncovering new categories of victims to protect from discrimination, they believe it’s somehow righteous to discriminate against political opponents.     

They label Trump a liar.  Yet they still worship the man who repeatedly and emphatically lied to us all to ram Obamacare down our throats, the same man who callously lied about the deaths of a United States ambassador and three other diplomats in Libya. 

They call Trump a tyrant.  One major magazine cover depicted him as a king, with crown and royal mantle.  They’ve all forgotten about Barack Obama’s pompous “pen and phone” proclamation.  They’ve forgotten how he unilaterally amended our immigration laws by establishing DACA through Executive Order, and how he intended to expand it even further until the Supreme Court stopped him. 

They say Trump hates immigrants, though he’s been married to a legal immigrant for 13 years.  They brand him a Nazi; call him racist and un-American for simply enforcing the immigration laws of this country, laws sometimes ignored by Obama. 

Most of the criticism against Trump, the misperception cultivated by the left, is utterly void of logic.  Even after he reversed some of his more rigid positions, it did nothing to appease his enemies.    

We watch Maxine Waters working the streets, ranting, flailing, and inciting, spreading her message of hate and division.  Most of us are repulsed by what we see, yet a small crowd wildly applauds her, embracing her message of hate, and spreading it.  Emboldened by a twisted sense of self-righteousness, they harass, harangue, and intimidate fellow citizens who are simply trying to enjoy time with their families.   

Photo credit: Majunzk via Flickr

 via FlickrThere is, no doubt, a radical element in this country that hates the president and everything America stands for.  They’ve been joined by others, those always eager to jump onto the next bandwagon, mindless of its destination.  Their logic and reason have been blunted by raw emotion, and their obstinacy has been fueled by their misguided self-righteousness.  

They have reduced the debate to black and white, right and wrong, and designated themselves as the champions of virtue.  But the concept of good and evil is not always so clear-cut.  While that seems today to depend largely on political affiliation, there should be no debate about the ugliness and the evil of this growing hysteria, the mindless hatred and intolerance that is threatening our country.

Peter Lemiska is a military veteran and retired Senior Special Agent of the U.S. Secret Service. His opinion pieces regularly appear on renewamerica.com and other conservative sites.