ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- As a newsman who has been on the job for nearly four decades, I'm embarrassed to admit that the happiest people I know make a point of not following the news.

I don't blame them. These days, the process of following current events is often dark, depressing and disempowering.

Still, totally checking out of news coverage isn't the answer. You should never turn your back on government or the shady politicians who skillfully run that enterprise for their benefit.

Nor is it the answer to get your news exclusively from one of the echo chambers -- the blue one or the red one. That seems to be the case with some of my friends. They're solidly perched on the right or the left, and they are 100% sure of things that are often 100% wrong.

All you need is a quick perusal of social media to know that some of the folks who are most adamant about what they believe are often among the least informed. For some people, I guess it's too much work to flip between CNN and Fox News to get the full picture.

Over the years, I've had polite but frustrating conversations with a white woman in her 60s whose television was permanently set to MSNBC, and a Latino in his 40s who didn't trust any news source other than Fox News. These people didn't want to have their views challenged or be forced to think critically. They just wanted to be entertained, and what they found entertaining was watching folks who agreed with them pummel people they didn't like.

That's why there are liberals who are so anti-Trump that they refuse to admit that elements of MAGA have a valid point when they accuse the left of cowardly trying to avoid conflict and going soft on antisemitism, whether that poison is coming from Black rappers or student protesters or Democratic members of Congress.

And it's why there are conservatives who -- whenever there is an anti-Jewish hate crime such as the recent killing in Washington of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, a young couple who worked for the Israeli Embassy -- act like the left has cornered the market on antisemitism and there is not a drop of it on the right.

Obviously, that is nonsense. Like all the other "-isms" -- racism, sexism, nativism, classism, etc. -- you'll find plenty of antisemitism in both parties. We're talking about some of the darker aspects of human nature, after all. No party is immune. We needn't pretend otherwise.

Antisemitism is everywhere. The left should definitely atone for being overly lenient with the Democratic members of "the Squad," but the right also has to answer for downplaying the bigoted ravings of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes.

President Donald Trump isn't a true conservative, or even a textbook Republican. He is his own entity. And at this point, with its nativist impulses delighting white supremacists and its protectionist instincts pleasing organized labor, the MAGA movement he launched 10 years ago during his first run for the presidency has become its own party.

One of the MAGA party's guiding principles is that image matters more than substance. Against the backdrop of a national and global surge in antisemitism that followed the brutal Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel and the subsequent destruction of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, Trump wants to be seen as a defender of the Jewish people.

And with breathtaking chutzpah, the president is using that framing to justify and paper over a series of injustices that he has committed in his second term. Trump's excesses range from a crackdown on civil liberties and a threat to impeach federal judges who challenge executive decrees to blatant assaults on the Constitution and a recent series of punitive attacks against Harvard University.

Let's not forget that one of the reasons that the oldest college in the United States finds itself at war with the Trump White House is because the president contends the university is enrolling radical foreign students who stoke anti-Israel hatred on campus and that Harvard administrators turned a deaf ear to concerns of Jewish students who have -- since the recent wave of troubles in the Middle East began -- felt shunned, harassed and intimidated on campus.

I don't expect Americans to solve all the world's problems. But I do expect us all to be honest as we try to navigate a reality that is much more complicated than the political parties would have us believe.

========

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate, Inc.