Informant wrote:That's true. I think that the media obviously does treat the two parties differently. Whereas the people who said crazy things about Obama were painted as conspiracy theorist, anything said about Trump is regarded as legitimate news. For example, the birthers. Yeah, I never expected to find out that Obama was born in another country and couldn't be President, but there were legitimate questions to ask about why he wasn't required to show his birth certificate when it was requested (proving eligibility is something that even McCain had to deal with) and why he spent millions of dollars specifically to avoid showing it.
Most likely, it was because it made his detractors look insane, and that worked in his favor.
On Twitter, Erica Durance made a post about the whole "animals" thing. After is was proven to be fake news , she acknowledged that, but pivoted to say more bad things about Trump. So while the facts of the situation were tossed, "points" were still added to the "anti-Trump pile". Does that make sense?
And while this isn't significant on it's own, that pile of hollow hatred keeps growing with more and more instances where facts are thrown away while emotions are retained. I think that contributes to the overall toxic political climate in the media and on social media, whereas a more balanced disagreement/dislike would be more realistic and more productive.
And I've definitely done stuff like this in the past, calling Hillary a psychopath, or joking about "Pinky and McCain" back in the day. Hell, I make jokes about Trump too, because he makes me cringe all the time. But I do try to avoid getting so deep into irrational hatred that I can't find my way back to objective reality. A lot of the people I've seen online are way beyond the point of objective reality, and they react with pure hatred if you try to bring facts into the conversation.
But I guess the riots and lootings have died down, so... That's progress. 
There's a saying, every villain sees themselves as the hero. And just the same, they see their counterparts (who some view as the 'good' guy) as the villain.
People have their own rationality, and everyone thinks they are objective. There's very few people who say, OK, I admit, I don't see the world through an objective lens or things as they actually are.
In my opinion, some people are beyond reasoning with, and there's no point in trying to have an intellectual debate with them, because they are never going to move from their position, because ultimately, their agenda is going to help them rationalize whatever conclusions they want to arrive at. Otherwise, the people not in this group need to be able to say things you don't agree with, and even miscommunicate them in an unsophisticated, non-PC way, without being attacked for their initial positions. There has got to be listening and explaining why both parties feel as they do, because I guarantee you both parties haven't lived an issue the same way and have something to learn from each other. But you know, there's no point in even engaging with folks who don't listen or say stuff that simply defies logic, or shows they are in a set agenda, and are not going to move anyway. Because those folks are not gonna likely change, and it's better for people who are open to change to invest their time in any intellectual debate if there's going to be any sort of progress.
But the moment someone says something blasphemous, they really start to lose me.
One of the hard things about this country, and why our discourse is so poor, is because we are beginning in a situation where we have so much diversity, both in populations and the differences between our states, that there are a lot of competing incentives, and someone is going to catch the short end of the stick, no matter what, at least in the short term. This is why we have so much trouble agreeing on the role of federal vs. state government, imo. And it is hard to have a productive debate, where someone is going to always lose, given these circumstances. So things become heated.
