Even before Hurricane Harvey waylaid southeast Texas, the idea was to write this piece, to offer some perspective on the difference between our corrupt media’s relentless portrayal of a hopelessly divided America, and a little something known as Reality.

Having spent 6 weeks (during 3 separate trips) on the road this summer, having spent time in about 10 different states, my own experience outside the media-fabricated bubble was an eye opener. Then the terrible devastation of Harvey came along and, I hope, broke the media’s wicked spell across the fruited plain.

You need not live in Manhattan or DC to bubble yourself, and by extension, be hoodwinked by a media and Left desperate to crack our union in two. The only requirement is a news addiction fed by the establishment media. If that toxin is your primary portal to the outside world, you are being misled. And I say this not from On High, but from experience.

Through this media portal, we are always portrayed as being at each other’s throats. And not just along political lines, which is not a terrible thing if you believe debate is good for democracy, but along toxified racial, gender, age, region, and lifestyle lines.

Basically, the media fabricates the following: that old white men (i.e. Trump supporters) are desperate to hold on to their privilege at the expense brown, black, gay, female, and young Americans. And for this reason, every brown, black, gay, female, and young American must vote Democrat.

Let’s begin with the fact that nearly half of those, 48%!, who voted for Trump are NOT men. Let’s end with the fact that 43% of those who voted for Trump are NOT white. This means that there are, literally, tens of millions of non-whites and women who support this president.

If you look at the establishment media, though, this inconvenient fact is intentionally memory-holed, all in service to a propaganda campaign meant to hustle Americans into believing we hate one another. The obvious goal is to turn propaganda into reality by fooling us into believing we must join a tribe, a tribe as defined by the media, a tribe that comports perfectly with the evil of identity politics, which can only result in putting elites and their centralized government back in power.

The primary weapons in this propaganda war are extremist groups the media dishonestly uses as avatars for all of us. Therefore, it is no accident that every single one of these groups, starting with the KKK and white supremacists, and ending with AntiFa and Black Lives Matter, are leftwing hate groups — groups conceived, birthed and raised by a Democrat Party desperate to cover up its failed ideas with grievance coalitions too shallow to see past their own precious identities.

These hate groups also give the media its desired chaos narrative, the emotional blackmail that demands we take a side, which is, at its essence, a ransom note that reads:

DEAR AMERICA: ALL THIS UGLINESS AND DIVISION WILL GO AWAY IF YOU VOTE THE WAY WE TELL YOU TO.

By over-blowing and inundating us with 24/7 with strife and violence, by stressing us out, this is the media holding civility and the social compact hostage; demanding we pay a ransom that surrenders merit to identity and individual freedom to government.

In other words, what you see 24/7 on CNN is not America. What you see on CNN, rather, is the America CNN wants to create through lies. The truth is this: even on a Big News night, no more than about 7 million tune into ALL of cable news, and any amount of time spent in the Real World is a revelation of just how little impact and influence the establishment media is having on our country.

After six weeks on the road, after dozens of people in states as politically diverse as Illinois and South Carolina, Maryland and West Virginia, I am heartened to report that the people in this country get along, live and work together, just fine. Out in the Real World, no one’s taking it to the streets, obsessed with identity, or at each other’s throats. Politics almost never came up, and the few times it did ended with a handshake or hug.

In fact, Americans of all stripes are busy living their lives, raising their kids, embracing summer. The only noticeable effect DC is having on Real America is an increased optimism about the economy.

The very day that two leftwing groups — white supremacists and AntiFa — went after each other in Charlottesville, you want to know where I was? At a wedding in Chicago, in a building hosting five receptions simultaneously, in a place packed with hundreds of people of every conceivable racial background enjoying each other’s company. It was e pluribus unum on steroids. There was no tension, no awkwardness, no nothing other than Americans — AMERICANS — enjoying the fruits of hard work, family, friendship and community.

And then Houston happened; good heavens, what a great country we are, what a great people we are. The very people who are ordered by the media to hate one another — blacks, Hispanics, whites, southerners, — instead helped, rescued, saved, consoled and soothed one another. From out of state, the Deplorables came, flying the flag of the Cajun Army, volunteering to risk their own lives to save a city that is much more black and Hispanic than not.

What we are seeing in Houston is not the exception, is not the outlier.

What we are seeing in Houston is who we are, is America.

Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.