After Trump’s election: ‘There are two Americas now.’ By William Wan.
Two weeks after the election of Donald Trump, this is how divided America has become: People have moved beyond staring at the vast gulf that divides them and proceeded to arguing over who is to blame for it, what to do about it and even whether it exists at all.
“This idea that we’re now divided is being manufactured and spread by the media,” said Trump supporter Loy Brunson, 60, a musician in Provo, Utah. The protesters on the street? “Paid professionals hired to provoke,” Brunson said. The anger and vitriol online? “Hillary’s fault ever since she called us deplorables.” The growing number of hate crimes? “Played up by the left.”
To Kelcey Caulder, 22, the division is painfully real. The college student from Athens, Ga., feels its looming presence every time she thinks about her grandma, a Trump supporter and ardent opponent of abortion rights. They haven’t talked much since Caulder’s grandma found out that Caulder was voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton and told her granddaughter bluntly, “You’re going to hell.”
Korey, a student at the Georgetown University Law Center, said he is skipping Thanksgiving altogether because of lingering resentments in his family over the election. After he posted an anti-Trump message on Facebook, his father stopped talking to him, and his mother’s ex-husband threatened to write him out of his will. Korey, who asked to be identified by only his first name to avoid further angering his relatives, said he’s not ready to reconcile. In fact, he said, he plans to confront his father over his willingness to overlook offensive statements by Trump about immigrants, minorities, disabled people and women just to beat the Democrats. “The lesson I took,” Korey said, “was you can do and say anything you want as long as you’re running as a Republican against Hillary Clinton, which cuts against everything he’s ever taught me about doing the right thing even when it’s not easy.”
The mainstream media sold the leftists a message based on political correctness rather than reality, and sold them the idea that they were moral superior and on the side of history and angels for believing that message. It was always going to come unstuck some day, but there is a lot of mess to clean up.
Even companies and commercial products have been forced in recent days to take sides. New Balance shoes were suddenly declared the official footwear of white supremacy by neo-Nazis and set on fire by some anti-Trump customers after a spokesman expressed support for Trump’s trade policies.
Trump supporters threatened to boycott Pepsi after PepsiCo chief executive Indra Nooyi said her employees were in mourning. At least three NBA teams said they would no longer stay at Trump hotels. Twitter was celebrated and castigated as it suspended the accounts of various leaders of the “alt-right,” a loose collection of far-right conservatives and white nationalists.
