After predicting that President Trump’s inaugural speech would include something about “bringing the nation together.” I have sifted through the official transcript for a complete collection of his unity themes.
There was a lot of turbo-charged we’s throughout his speech: “We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people. Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But We will get the job done…We are one nation, and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams, and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home and one glorious destiny.”
That’s all very nice and sounds promising, but there are a large number of very annoyed, very loud Americans who don’t want any part of any of those we’s. They claim they reject our gilt-tipped president because he stands for hate, and they claim to hate hate. But the forest of middle fingers, the promiscuous use of the F-word, the foam and spittle, the fields of extremely impolite signs, and many inventive accusations on display during, and immediately after, the speech suggest that those protesters lie. They appear to love hate, “not wisely but too well.”
The We Hate Trump jamborees in our nation’s capital, Portland, Maine, San Francisco, and elsewhere bring to mind a November 2016 tweet by Sally Kohn: “My sense is that if Trump wins, Hillary supporters will be sad. If Hillary wins, Trump supporters will be angry. Important difference.”
Sally is a lawyer, a CNN political commentator, a community organizer, and terribly wrong. This is all you need to know about her.
Before we leave the subject of idiocy behind I want to draw my readers’ attention to two prime video exhibits. One showed Madonna claiming she has thought about blowing up the White House. Second, there was Ashley Judd giving her impassioned, interminable imitation of Dolores Ibarruri (the leftist “Passion Flower” of the Spanish Civil War). Somebody has to tell the woman that this doesn’t work when you wear tight white jeans. Dolores would never have worn tight white jeans.
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post speaks for many liberal pundits when she accuses Trump of refusing to acknowledge his role in aggravating our nation’s divisions and neglecting his responsibility to try to cure it. His prattle about national unity did not impress her. She believes his speech lacked grace. It was too dark. It spoke alarmingly of “ravages” and “tombstones” and “decay.” The new president bracketed the whole thing with clenched fists, which “perfectly signaled the pugnacious presidency to come.”
Over on the right side of the divide, Sean Davis offered a similar analysis. “President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech was not meant to bridge political divides. Instead, it was a clear and concise declaration of war against the established order.” Davis is co-founder of “The Federalist,” a sophisticated conservative source. He liked the “dark” parts of the speech much better than Marcus, but agreed with her dismissal of the national unity parts.
Actually, Davis went further. On Jan. 20, he heard a call to arms and a declaration of war on the ruling class in these words: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have bore the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth,” Trump said in his speech. “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”
Marcus’s point about national unity is not wrong. Saying “When America is united, America is totally unstoppable,” President Trump affirmed them. I suspect, however, that Trump sees Marcus and the whole Washington Post crew as part of the ‘Establishment.’ It may be that Trump wants to unite with her no more than Marcus, Judd, and Madonna wants to unite with him.
So there’s our problem with national unity.