I try not to live in a political bubble or echo chamber. I’m a centre-right conservative but I make sure that I try to read the writings of those with whom I disagree. This is because I believe that echo chambers are dangerous, they encourage a person to only view the stuff that comes from their point of view and not have their views challenged by others who on occasion might be correct.

Because I read Britain’s Jewish Chronicle on a regular basis I am familiar with the writings of the columnist Jonathan Freedland, a commentator who also is a regular with the centre-Left Guardian newspaper. I don’t often agree with Mr Freedland’s viewpoint but his writing has often been entertaining and thought provoking. Yes he can be a bit of a liberal ‘sandalista’ at times but the vast majority of what I’ve read from Mr Freedland is reasonable, well written and gives me, a conservative, a window into the viewpoint of those who are implacably opposed to the things that I believe in.

However, a recent column by Mr Freedland for the Guardian newspaper is not his usual liberal reasonableness. It is an inglorious and demented example of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s miles away from the usual stuff he writes which even if I disagree with it, is often still readable. This on the other hand is shocking. It’s merely a list of all the things that Mr Freedland and the middle class Left in the UK hate about Trump. It’s full of criticisms of Trump some possibly justified but many more which are not. This is the sort of writing that you would normally expect to find in Socialist Worker the organ of the extremist Socialist Workers Party, not a major and once venerable national newspaper.

Here’s part of Mr Freedland’s screed against President Trump.

This is not a normal election. I don’t say that because it is now clear that, against some stiff competition, Donald Trump is the most repellent individual ever to have sought, let alone won, the presidency of the United States. The latest proof comes in a quadruple-sourced account of Trump describing US troops who died for their country as “losers” and “suckers”, and demanding that a military parade exclude wounded veterans, lest spectators glimpse an amputee. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

There was a time when the Atlantic’s jaw-dropping report, later corroborated “in its entirety” by the Associated Press, would have proved terminal for a politician in a country where respect for the military supposedly has the status of a religious obligation. But that time is long past. It ended in 2015 when Trump branded John McCain – who had spent more than five years in a Hanoi cell as a prisoner of war – a “loser”, though of course now Trump swears blind that he never said any such thing, despite the existence of video showing him saying exactly that.

In a normal election, you’d be running the numbers on the harm this would do to Trump among his avowedly patriotic base. But wiser heads have learned to give up on such calculations. Trump’s supporters will write this off as more fake news, and stick with their man even as he tramples on everything they claim to hold dear. Like he always said, he could shoot people on Fifth Avenue and they’d still vote for him.

Which is why it will similarly make no difference that this week he spouted conspiracist garbage about Joe Biden being controlled by people “in the dark shadows”, or reheated a Facebook-spread fantasy about black-clad looters boarding planes to fly around the country causing trouble – think of it as RiotAir – offering no evidence. Of course that won’t move the needle.

Read the rest of Mr Freedland’s Guardian article via the link below:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/04/trump-democracy-voting-process-elected

This is not the Jonathan Freedland whom I have grown to know and tolerate. This writing is the work of an ideologue and what’s more an ideologue that is worried that Mr Trump may well win the next Presidential election. Of course there are criticisms that could be levelled at Mr Trump just as there are criticisms that could be aimed at all politicians and political leaders, but Mr Freedland’s article goes way way beyond intelligent criticisms of a national leader, it’s an angry ideological screed.

What Mr Freedland has written in his article is a good example as to why it is a bad idea to live in a political echo chamber. He has apparently imbibed deeply from the well of Trump Derangement Syndrome as have others on the British liberal / Left and has produced an article that can only really be described as demented. This article is so stunningly biased, deranged and unlike Mr Freedland’s other writings that I can’t help but wonder if there’s something wrong with the chap that has caused him to write like this. If there is then all I can say to him is refuah sh’lemah which is Hebrew for a speedy recovery from what ever is ailing him.