Gerald Seib, in his Wall Street Journal‘s Capital Journal, has an odd take on the political (personal?) divide moving through our nation.
From the moment he rode down the escalator at his eponymous Fifth Avenue skyscraper to announce his candidacy three years ago, President Donald Trump has divided Americans[]
goes his lede, and he proceeds from there.
Never mind that it was then-Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) who dismissed Tea Partiers as mere Astroturfers.
Never mind that it was the NLMSM that insulted Tea Partiers with the careful slur of being mere tea bagger.
Never mind that is was then-Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D, MO) called Republicans terrorists for disagreeing with Congressional Progressive-Democrats on a bill.
Never mind that it was ex-President Barack Obama (D) who dismissed millions of Americans as mere bitter Bible-toting gun-clingers in flyover country and who insisted, while agreeing that he didn’t have all the facts, that police act stupidly.
Never mind that it was Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D) who dismissed millions of Americans as irredeemably deplorable racists, misogynists, homophobic, and Islamophobic.
Never mind that it’s the Left’s Antifa and BLM who routinely shout down and deny the right to speak to Americans with whom they disagree.
Never mind that it was the Left who, on Inauguration Day, didn’t just protest Donald Trump’s election and inauguration, they rioted and burned private businesses.
Trump’s comments often are personally demeaning, but they’re exactly that: personal. Trump disparages, in uncommonly rude terms for a public office holder, other people, but he does it to individual persons. He also only does so in response to a personal attack on him. He doesn’t denigrate whole groups of Americans, and he doesn’t do it as the opening shot in a manufactured series of insults.
No, the divisions in our nation are long-standing and growing—and it’s the Progressive-Democrats and their Left base who are doing the dividing, and doing it with increasing zeal.