I get aggravated when people like LeBron James say Trump is "dividing" America due to his opinions on the national anthem protests.
The people taking a knee during the anthem are the ones beginning the divisions. They started it. That's the divide. Trump saying what millions of others agree with isn't dividing us.
Fake outrage over things that make no sense. That's why the Democratic Party isn't in positions of power.
I don't think it's OK for Trump to call folks SOB's. And I don't think, on balance, that Trump should call for folks to be fired. I don't think he's wrong to call people out on conduct, but those aspects of it, I have concluded, are way over the top. Mike Pence would have responded to these gestures by saying "That's what freedom looks like and sounds like!", and he's right about that.
But, no, I don't believe Trump is dividing people further. The divisions on display today have been there a long time, and I do believe that it's the BLM crowd and the leftists that are the most provocative. Trump is someone who brings out these divisions, but he didn't cause them, and the folks on the left who have a vested interest in these divisions remaining don't want these divisions to disappear. Trump has only shone light on this.
Having said that, it's a fair to question if Trump's illumination of existing divisions is a good thing. I loathe "counterdemonstrators"; had they just stayed away in Charlottesville (along with the media), the alt-right would have gone back in their holes. Those folks WANTED heated confrontation with the alt-right; in doing so, they made the alt-right look bigger than it is because they were now being compared to the size of the counterdemonstrator crowd, and not the size of the consensus of America who think they can go rot. But Trump's actions have now put the BLM crowd on display, and given legitimacy to folks who, IMO, are showing contempt for America when they kneel for the flag. Those folks, too, should probably ignored; they'd eventually go away and the issue left to serous folks and not attention junkies. It's probably too late for that course of action now.
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