Politics of division incapable of uniting the nation

A well-meaning misunderstanding underlies the horrified hand-wringing over President Trump’s refusal to reach for national unity in the face of terrorist threats against his opponents.

It’s assumed that those who hold the presidential office automatically push aside partisanship during moments of crisis.

But this wishful thinking overlooks the central fact about Donald Trump’s approach to politics: His grip on power depends entirely on splitting the nation in two. Angry division — rooted in race, gender, immigration-status, religion and ideology — allowed Trump to become president. Absent a politics of us-versus-them, Trumpism makes no sense at all.

This explains why Trump, after a rote declaration Wednesday that “we have to unify,” quickly resumed his patented attacks on the media.

At 3:14 am on Friday — yes, he was again tweeting in the middle of the night — Trump declared: “Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of bombs and ridiculously comparing this to Sept. 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them, they go wild and scream, ‘it’s just not Presidential!’”

Conservatives have long criticized the idea of “moral equivalence.” Where are they now?

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/dionne-politics-of-division-incapable-of-uniting-the-nation/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=3d493ef860-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-3d493ef860-228635337