America's Tribalism can destroy the dream of an ideal democracy.
Donald Trump is RAPING American VALUES, smothering what little he has accomplished in his 15 months as Hate-monger in Chief. His bullying tweets, lack of character, decisive indecisveness (changes his loudly, proudly announced "decisions," like NRA or drug pricing deals, over-night, goes back on deals)immorality and lies would be partly tolerable if he did not work so hard to divide America.
Why has no one written an opinion, or simple editorial of "pillow talk" between Mr. and Mrs. Conway?! He dislikes and tweets against tweety, while SHE works for the lying huckster, NEVER answering any questions about tweety's lies!
People did not like Obama, and they said he was divisive when he did things they did not like. A lot of people did not like a black man telling them what was right and good for this country. It is the same situation for men who hate strong women telling them what was right and good, like Tweety . . . .
We will pay dearly for Tweety's crushing effort to enable and ensure Tribalism in America! True Believers on all sides, and NONE are good. This is not good on both sides.
"True-believer syndrome is an informal or rhetorical term used by M. Lamar Keene in his 1976 book The Psychic Mafia. Keene used the term to refer to people who continued to believe in a paranormal event or phenomenon even after it had been proven to have been staged.[1][2] Keene considered it to be a cognitive disorder,[3][4] and regarded it as being a key factor in the success of many psychic mediums.[2]
The term "true believer" was used earlier by Eric Hoffer in his 1951 book The True Believer to describe the psychological roots of fanatical groups."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True-believer_syndrome
It may be arguable whether Tweety is the MOST divisive Prez in history, but there is NO ARGUMENT Tweety IS ENABLING, STOKING HATE AND FEAR ("GASLIGHTING" AMERICA) TO PROMOTE A TRIBALISM NEVER BEFORE SEEN IN THIS COUNTRY.
America is a tribal country, we have been since before the Civil War. But I feel the force-fed tribalism of Donald Trump can hurt this country like it has never been hurt before.
"Us and them: how America divided into tribes"
Amy Chua argues that both left and right are to blame for the rise of rancorous identity politics 21 Feb 2018
https://www.ft.com/content/f4e18952-157b-11e8-9e9c-25c814761640
"
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https://www.ft.com/content/f4e18952-157b-11e8-9e9c-25c814761640
During most of their country’s existence, she writes, American leaders have ignored the idea of “tribalism”, or intense local and ethnic identities. That is because the dominant rhetoric — or founding mythology — about American identity was that tribalism did not exist, since America was a modern nation. “Alone among the major powers, America is what I will call a super-group,” says Chua, who defines a “super-group” as “a distinctive kind of group . . . in which membership is open to individuals from all different backgrounds — ethnic, religious, racial, cultural.”
But Chua argues that this vision of the American nation has always been riddled with self-deception, since ethnic, racial and class loyalties have never truly disappeared in America, let alone anywhere else. And she argues that this has two important implications.
First, Americans need to recognise that tribalism — in the sense of group identities — exists inside America and is becoming stronger today under President Donald Trump. Second, drawing on the example of McMaster, Chua argues that American leaders need to ponder the issue of tribalism on the world stage. “If we want to get our foreign policy right . . . the United States has to come to grips with political tribalism,” she concludes, after presenting a series of narratives about America’s misadventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — three places where ethnic and tribal loyalties matter deeply, and have been ignored by Washington.
I would argue America’s leaders need to start at "home," in our country, and acknowledge White Power / Nationalist and other extremists like the KKK, to manage the incedious tribalism that undermines our ideals and values, and to think more clearly about the implications for peace and harmony in our country.
Tweety is consciously dividing this country into tribes. What makes Tweety so successful is the willingness of Americans to join one of the two tribes.
What disturbs me most is this country's peoples happily dividing itself into True Believers for liberal and conservative tribes! It is destructive to a society as a whole. People skip discussing issues for a constructive remedy of difficulties and disagreements, and go straight to "I am a Republican!" or "I am a Democrat!" That is the end of any hope for constructive solutions to problems that divide Americans into those two tribes.
"Is Trump the most divisive President in the US history?"
https://www.quora.com/Is-Trump-the-most-divisive-President-in-the-US-history
Go read the discussion. It is interesting. There are 12 answers, here is last one.
"by Tim Perry, J.D. Law, University of California, Berkeley (1977)
Answered Oct 15 2017 · Author has 104 answers and 37.7k answer views
I strongly disagree with John Cate. Bear with me for this requires some analysis. I'll get to Lincoln below.
First, the answer is that Trump is the most divisive president by far. Looking objectively at his campaign rhetoric and conduct in office there can be no other conclusion. A reporter recounts a conversation with Trump’s campaign manager Steve Bannon in 2013:
”Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. Shocked, I asked him what he meant. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed. “Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.” In 2016 Bannon said he "did not recall” the conversation — the last refuge of a scroundrel. ( Steve Bannon, Trump’s Top Guy, Told Me He Was ‘a Leninist’ ).
Bannon aside (if possible) Trump provides a perfect foil for Russia's powerful and growing influence operation to undermine democracy by creating division in open societies. The Russians’ ultimate objective is to create chaos, not necessarily to pick a winner, not that they mind if their man of the day succeeds. I emphasize I do not accuse Trump of this — he appears to be simply the perfect unwitting agent. We shall see on that point. But he certainly is a clear and present danger and a master at sowing division.
As an aside, I recommend Hamilton 68: Tracking Putin's Propaganda Push... To America on the point of Russian influence operations — the name is a reference to Hamilton’s Federalist Paper No. 68 which discusses this issue, not the musical “"Hamilton.” It is a non-partisan site devoted to tracking Russian social media operations.
Now for Lincoln. First it is a historical fact that he saved the Union, rather than allowing its division. That aside, it was not Lincoln who divided the nation but rather the slave states that seceded. To say otherwise is a sophistry defending the position that slaves were property, not people entitled to the universal human rights declared in the Declaration of Independence. In its most abhorrent decision ever, the Supreme Court in the 1854 Dred Scott decision held that slavery was a Constitutional right throughout the country. That decision killed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 which would have given each new state the right of self-determination on the issue of slave v. free.
The Southern states did not secede because Lincoln demanded abolition in the existing Southern states, but because they rejected his position that each new state should be free or exercise self-determination on the issue of being slave or free. In fact, Lincoln made very clear he did not intend to abolish slavery altogether, and was roundly condemned by abolitionists for that position. (The Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime expedient adopted at the end of 1863, long after the war had begun.). It was the Confederacy’s rejection of self-determination and subsequent assault on Fort Sumter that began the Civil War. (Importantly, Fort Sumter controlled the approaches to the port of Charleston, which the Confederates recognized as their best port for running any later naval blockade with guns and ammunition from Europe paid for with outgoing cotton.)
in short, proclaiming Lincoln the most divisive President is a classic exercise in blaming the victim.
if you'd like a nominee for most divisive other than Trump, pick Lincoln’s predecessor James Buchanan who bears far more responsibility for the Civil War."
An example of seeking out his base, Tweety goes to NRA.
"At the N.R.A. Convention, Donald Trump Talks About Knives in London and Support from Kanye West"
“Doing well with North Korea,” the President noted. He also called Paul Manafort a “nice guy” whom he employed “for a couple months.”
By Charles Bethea May 4, 2018
Tweety tells lies to create fear, as he falsely says the 2nd Amendment is under sige. By whom? High school kids? The dead kids? The dead adults?
"siege
sēj/
noun
noun: siege; plural noun: sieges
a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling the surrender of those inside"
And Tweety takes credit for any success for North Korea, when he clearly is only one of many players.
