Get together, or else!
by digby
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| “Are country: will fail as one our country is divided and will remain that way”
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That’s from a series of pictures taken by a Buzzfeed reporter at a Trump rally where people were asked to write their reasons for supporting Trump on that big pad.
This one is a bit incoherent but it reflects something I hear all the time about Trump (and from Trump.) They think Trump is the only candidate who can “bring people together.”
In his case it seems as if they thinks he will force everyone to do what they want and so we’ll be together but the sentiment is not one confined to the right. Recall in 2008 that a whole lot of liberals thought Obama would bring the whole country together.
I was skeptical about that then and am completely convinced now that this is a fantasy. Right now the country is bitterly divided on some fundamental issues and it’s just going to have to be fought out and argued for the time being. We may evolve back into some kind of cultural consensus — that’s what we hope will happen as these more tolerant millennials get older and take over. So maybe there will be a time in the future when the arguments aren’t so contentious. But right now, this is what we have — a country filled with people who disagree strongly about some very important stuff.
The Trump voters are especially foolish since Trump is actually polarizing his own party is some ways that may fracture it. But even if he weren’t their belief that any conservative Republican, much less a neo-fascist like Trump, can unite the country is as much a pipe dream just as the idea that the first black president was magically going to “change Washington.” It doesn’t work that way.
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