The Myth of Divisiveness
As the final poll numbers came in over the weekend and news outlets began declaring Joe Biden victor of the 2020 presidential election, the response was nearly uniform: Biden’s win meant the end to the most divisive presidency in American history. Now would start a new era of peace and unity.
I thought this strange considering practically half of the country voted against Biden. It seems to me that we’re awfully divided no matter who is president. That didn’t occur to the ecstatic media, who saw Trump as so divisive that anyone who replaced him would be a force for unity. With Trump we couldn’t possibly come together. Without him, anything was possible.
But this wasn’t the first time we had heard this.
Déjà Vu
In fact, the same narrative was rolled out in 2008 after Barack Obama had defeated John McCain. You might remember. At that time it was George W. Bush who had divided our country and a new dawn was rising of unity and peace under Obama.
Looking back, we find that we heard the same story in 1992, when George H. W. Bush had divided the nation and Bill Clinton was going to unite us once again. In fact, it wasn’t just Trump who was seen as divisive, it was every Republican president going back to Nixon. And it’s not just Biden who is going to bring us peace and unity. It’s every Democratic president back to Kennedy. What exactly is going on here?
To be sure, it might well be that Republican leaders are in fact divisive while Democratic presidents are not. With the Bushes, there were highly contentious wars. With Nixon, there was Watergate. With Trump, there were no more new wars, but there was that whole Russian interference thing and his bluster speaks for itself. Perhaps Republicans are just divisive by nature.
But the theory doesn’t pass muster. Democrats have done and said some very divisive things as well. In addition to their wars and contentious policies, their rhetoric has been especially incendiary. One analyst called Obama the most divisive president in American history.
Why don’t we hear about that? There’s a simple answer. A person is only seen as divisive if we disagree with him. If we agree with what a person says and stands for, he cannot be divisive. It just so happens that the people who determine who’s divisive and who’s not all agree with what the Democrats say and they don’t agree with what the Republicans say. So Republicans are divisive and Democrats unite.
United By Division
The myth is that only one side is divisive. If we listen to the media, a Biden presidency will mean that all disagreement will suddenly end, that Democrats and Republicans will hold hands, and everyone will be singing ‘Kumbaya’ in the streets. Of course this is nonsense. The policies that Democrats have promised to install will be just as divisive as anything Trump has done. And the rhetoric is possibly more divisive now that the DNC has adopted the intersectional playbook of the social justice warriors. Biden and Harris-led Democrats paint half of the country as racist and sexist—can you get more divisive than that? The critical difference is that the big-tech-media-industrial-complex agrees with them, and so there won’t be a chorus weeping and wailing about how divisive they’re being.
Every president is divisive inasmuch as we have a divided country. As long as we are split down the middle on every major issue, any president who has an ounce of conviction will be divisive. But that’s not the way it’s portrayed in the media. Only one side is divisive and the other, by default, is unifying.
It’s really a brilliant trick. You can’t defend against the accusation of being divisive. If you deny it, you prove them right by being divisive. It’s like if someone called you argumentative. What are you supposed to do? If you deny it, you prove them right by arguing. But if you’re agreeable, you accept the label and so you’re argumentative anyway.
There’s no escape from this catch, as Trump has woefully discovered. Like an unwearied Sisyphus, Trump can push the boulder up the hill only to have the gods push it back down again.
Divided We Stand
Yes, this nation is divided after four years of Trump. But it was divided after eight years of Obama too. Those in the media see the sharp divide and point to Trump—he caused this! In reality, it could have been anybody not a Democrat in the White House and the accusations would have been the same. Thanks to the media, everyone knows that Trump is literally Hitler. But I remember propaganda that painted George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney as Hitler too. Everyone who opposes the Left is literally Hitler.
It just so happens that Trump doesn’t back down when he is taunted. He keeps fighting—pushing the boulder up the hill. He may be stubborn and even childish to keep trying. But he shouldn’t be considered divisive. He’s just standing his ground. And with all the garbage that has been thrown at him over the last four years, that is an impressive feat in itself.
