Wish I could read the actual editorial instead of someone else's interpretation of it, but since I don't subscribe to the Times (ick!), that's not going to happen.
However, I do think Trump is a polarizing figure. Many of us complained that Obama pitted the races against each other. But while Trump may or may not have caused this polarization, he certainly has not helped to bring back civil discourse and a willingness to agree to disagree. If anything, the divisions between us have become wider and far more serious. Is he to blame? Ok, disagree with me if you wish. But the fact is, things have become nastier. Pointing fingers and calling each other names has not helped. We used to be angry at liberals. Now we are angry at each other.
I think we all need to make a conscious effort to stop the name calling and bullying. If we can't get along, then we need to go to our neutral corners and chill out. I am not stupid, a traitor or an enemy of the state because I don't support Trump. You are not an idiot or a cult member because you support him.
And yes this all applies to me too because I've been mean to Trump supporters as well. But if I can try to be civil with the ones I disagree with, then the rest of you can too.
I will say this, that while I was opposed to Trump, himself, I have come to see that his tactics, no matter how distasteful, are producing results. Now, I work in the oil industry and am a result oriented person, although I believe in doing things right.
Imho, the way people act toward each other is a personal choice. If I can (and I do) disagree with Liberals in a civil manner, (although they don't always disagree with me that way), I can settle back and not make other disagreements personal. It is up to those who disagree with me how they want to act, and I have lost friends over that. If they want to they will have a hissy fit at me over the actions of someone else, whether I agree with those actions or not, and that fit is on them.
I found his behaviour prior to the General to be less than honorable, polarizing, and frankly, distasteful.
Enough so, that he did not get my vote, which went to the Constitution Party candidate, as much to support the Party and its platform (the US Constitution, stressing original intent) as anything.
That said, we are past that now, like the results or not of the Primaries, past the General election, and Trump won--a fate for this Republic I find far preferable to Hillary. We fight with the army we have, not the one we want, and this polarization of which you speak has been long fomented by the Democrats, even to the point of putting rioters in the streets over race and politics and even the preservation of historical monuments and statues.
There is the natural fault line, the rift in America, between those who want government to nurse them and mother them, and those of us who want it generally to get out of the way and let us provide for ourselves and our progeny, with a minimum of interference, just enough to keep things fair (a word whose definition in practice varies widely, but generally boils down to an application of the Golden Rule.
Other duties of the Federal Government were laid out in the Preamble and Constitution, along with the constraints both in the Constitution and the succeeding Amendments, particularly the Bill of Rights. Abide by the restrictions, perform the duties. Simple enough, one would think, and were it not for the creative and overreaching interpretations of jurists, something which would work.
But, since President Trump has taken office, here is what
has happened:
He has smoked out scores of leakers in the Executive branch (and elsewhere). They were there to do a job, and that job entailed executing any Constitutional orders which they were given, not slow walking, not leaking, not defying them, but to be professional and get the job done. Many are gone, some with clearances revoked.
Others, if still present have generally shut up.
He has exposed the Obama Administration's abuses of power, the DOJ, the FBI, and peeled back that rock. Often those have exposed themselves in order to attack him, not always unprovoked, but an effective tactic nonetheless.
He has polarized the political scene in one sense: those who claimed to be "moderates" who were actually crypto-Liberals have often ripped away their disguises and exposed themselves, fight down to the solidly unAmerican comments made by members of Congress.
The criminal organization that was the Clinton/Obama cartel has been exposed, thwarted, neutered, had key players who have been shut down (Brennan, for one), or likely eliminated in self-defense (Epstein) by the very people they catered to, and generally disrupted.
Many of the damaging Obama policies which would have benefited those who are our enemies have been reversed, both domestically and abroad. We have continued on as a result of those policy changes to have energy security for the first time in decades--no need to rely on anyone else, and the ability to export more than we import for convenience's sake and to maintain trade. Though we decry the debt, the petrodollar has real backing for a change, likely ensuring its status as the reserve currency in the world, for the near haul at least.
There was rumbling of other currencies replacing it less than a decade ago--something which would have had a disastrous impact on our economy. While that could still happen, it is a little less likely in the short term.
Ridiculous allegedly environmentally based restrictions have been thwarted, another economy crippling series of programs which have not come to pass.
Formidable individual enemies have been eliminated, enemies who plotted the destruction of Americans across the world, some for decades, in the stateless warfare we know as "terrorism".
If that isn't a real 'war on terror' I don't know what is. Better than buying off the warlords, better than paying tribute to the Barbary Pirates, or what have you. Sure, there will be others who replace them, but they, too, will be eliminated, in turn--if we have someone willing to make the call and get the job done, rather than let those who exposed them in turn be hunted down for our failure to act on that intel.
Some divisions are natural, and the Democrats' veil being torn aside to reveal their Marxism as they try to outdo each other on the dais in the debates is even more revealing. I simply do not think they have the backing they think they do or say they do, and that is why they are so desperate to import so many people who have lived under the Marxist yoke and stuff their heads with dung before they can find out the blessings of Liberty for them and their progeny.
The nonsense of inciting violence and using their media spin machine to make themselves look like victims has worn thin.
The nonsense of waving a race card has worn thin with all but those who hide behind it, and with many who could.
The Obama era of fomenting racism is still sputtering along, but less likely to gain new adherents except in the Marxist media, because history doesn't support a word of that latest crap.
If the division between those who support this Republic, and those who think it ought be a criminal Marxist oligarchy has been heightened, so be it. While we may squabble among ourselves, I would hope that we do not lose sight of the far more dangerous alternatives which await, ready to hammer down the gates of the Republic and destroy it, or throw those same gates open to invasion, physically and philosophically.
While Trump is not the Conservative I would have sought (in many senses falling far short of that Conservatism), in the binary world of national politics, one can choose which 'side' to be on, and the Marxists have taken over the Democrat Party.
It has long been accepted that the return to our Constitutional Republic will likely take a lifetime, and likely will not occur in ours, but, to borrow a page from the enemy playbook, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." We aren't going to magically return to that Republic, we must, for a change, make steps in the right direction.
The results, the footprints of this administration, are what indicate its direction, all media nonwithstanding.
