Tag: Divided Country

TRUMP OUTSHINES RUSSIAN TROLLS AT DECEIVING AND DIVIDING

Russia’s byzantine efforts to infect American politics with chronic misinformation and rampant discord may be about to end. And we have none other than Donald J. Trump to thank. With a president so deeply skilled at dividing people and turning truth on its head, there is no need to subcontract that work to the Russians. Who needs an elaborate Russian troll farm to crank out social media posts about the evil of black protesters and invading brown immigrants, when Trump can do it himself with the flick of his Twitter finger or the roar of his bully pulpit?

Remember those 13 Russians charged with clandestinely promoting Trump’s 2016 candidacy? They were accused of stirring the social media pot with totally fabricated posts touching on racist and xenophobic fears. The February indictment says their goal was to “sow discord in the U.S. political system. . .through information warfare (designed) to spread distrust towards the other candidates and the political system in general.” Well, the Donald has shown he can do all of that on his own. He was an excellent student of his Russian mentors, so much so that he no longer needs foreign aid.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder has written extensively about how the Russians pioneered the whole concept of “fake news” in the 1990s and 2000s. In his book, The Road to Unfreedom, Snyder explains that Vladimir Putin’s post-Cold War strategy was to make up for the regime’s lack of economic and technological power by flooding the Internet and television with misinformation and demonizing the institutions charged with uncovering facts, “and then exploit the confusion that results.” Wrote Snyder: “They cultivate enough chaos so people become cynical about public life and, eventually, about truth itself.” Then, in the 2010s, Snyder notes, Putin took that successful formula on the road in an effort to destabilize Western democracies. Low and behold, there was Donald Trump, ascending the golden escalator to launch a presidential campaign based on division and fabrication. It was a marriage made in Moscow.

One of the many examples of Russian skullduggery cited by the Mueller investigation involved an authentic photo of a Latino woman and her child holding a sign that said, “No Human Being is Illegal”. According to the indictment, the Russians digitally altered the sign to read, “GIVE ME MORE FREE SHIT” and plastered it on social media. Flash forward to the recent release by the White House of a doctored video that made it falsely appear that CNN’s Jim Acosta had aggressively grabbed the arm of a press aide. No need for foreign subterfuge when you can do it yourself.

In that same Russian indictment, a Kremlin operative was accused of circulating a fake news item under the heading of, “Hillary Clinton has Already Committed Voter Fraud during the Democrat Iowa Caucus.” As Snyder noted, the heart of the Russian game plan is not about ideology, it’s about getting people to accept that “there’s no reason to believe in anything. There is no truth. Your institutions are bogus.” But you hardly need a Russian troll farm to sow those seeds, when the president of the United States accuses the Democrats of voter fraud in Florida, Georgia and Arizona, the second he realizes his candidates might not win.

Most of the fabricated posts cited in the Russian indictment involved race, immigration and religion, obviously visceral hot-button issues that trigger deep divisions. They contained outrageous lies and threats about Black Lives Matter taking over major cities, Muslim terrorists hiding behind burkas and illegal immigrants destroying American communities. In other words, pretty much the same game plan Trump trotted out for the midterms. The only difference is that presidential pronouncements enjoy a wider circulation and carry more weight than Facebook posts. Based on Trump’s campaign rally speeches and his Twitter feed, Americans were alerted daily to the presidential fiction of a pending invasion of killer immigrants and middle east terrorists approaching the U.S. border. He totally outdid his Russian counterparts on this one by ordering the military to protect us from the fabricated attack.

For a president who celebrated his inauguration by lying about the size of the crowd, it’s hardly news that Donald Trump enjoys a perverse relationship with the truth. But he’s really outdone himself lately. He told one campaign rally that Democrats will give illegal immigrants free cars just for sneaking into the country. At another one, he berated Democrats for ignoring the health needs of veterans and boasted about how he got Congress to pass a bill allowing vets to use their own doctors if the VA wait time was too long. Only problem was that the bill he was talking about was passed in 2014 and signed by Obama. On the night that Democrats won a majority in the House, flipped seven governorships and eight state legislative chambers, Trump called the results “close to complete victory”. When his latest choice for attorney general drew fire, Trump absurdly insisted that he doesn’t even know the guy.

This behavior would be amusing if it came from a crazy oddball uncle, something to chuckle about on the way home from family gatherings. But this crazy uncle is our president, and he is using the Russian playbook to, as Snyder, the historian, calls it, “create chaos from inside” by making a mockery of truth and denigrating the instruments of democracy. For the Russians, such an outcome weakens their main adversary. For Trump, it’s just a way to get through another day. For the rest of us, it’s another reason to keep searching for an exit from this nightmare. Without truth, without faith in our democratic institutions, America’s greatness is as phony as Trump’s invasion from Central America.

FORGET CIVILITY. FIGHT TRUMP WITH WHATEVER WORKS

It seemed so clear to me when I started writing this post: tossing the president’s press secretary out of a restaurant was wrong. So were the boisterous dining disruptions that protesters foisted upon other Trump surrogates. Aren’t we supposed to go high when they go low? All this does is let the Trumsters play the victim card, right? Then a funny thing happened: I changed my mind.

Believe me, that was a painful experience. We all have our own style and approach to dealing with conflict, born of our life experiences. I spent more than 30 years as a union rep, tangling with some pretty virulent management types. The only real control I had – on a good day – was over myself. I chose civility, decency and respect, not out of a higher moral calling, but because that approach worked for me and my goal of helping union members get the best contract possible. That meant avoiding personal attacks and name-calling, and sticking to the issue at hand, while building power to make a decent deal.

So I cruised right along on my high horse, crafting this ode to civility and respect. I reread my words, searching for a pithy and righteous close. That’s when it struck me. I was wrong. This is Donald Trump’s America now, an ugly, hateful abyss that keeps turning darker and bleaker by the hour. Civility and respectfulness are not going to get our country back anytime soon.

During this past week:

A California woman screamed at a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent that Mexicans are “rapists, animals and drug dealers”, echoing one of Trump’s favorite litanies.

A Tennessee congressional candidate put up a billboard vowing to “Make America White Again”.

A South Carolina woman was charged with beating a black child and screaming racial epithets at him because he was swimming in a pool with white kids.

A North Carolina man who insists that God is a white supremacist and the Jews descended from Satan won the Republican primary for a seat in the state legislature.

Thousands of children, many in diapers, remain separated from their migrant parents as a result of Trump’s unconscionable political power play at the border.

The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s Muslim travel ban and delivered a serious blow to organized labor. With Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, credible court observers predict that abortion rights will be abolished within 18 months, and that the court will tilt severely rightward for decades to come.

In other words, Donald Trump is doing precisely what he promised. He is shaking up the foundations of our country at levels totally off the Richter Scale. This isn’t a collegial debate over tax policy or farm subsidies. This is a historic existential battle for the heart and soul of America. We are in a cold civil war that is getting warmer by the day. It will take more than civility to win this one.

Earlier this week, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters was wildly cheered by a crowd of energized millennials when she told them: “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!” By the end of the week, Waters had canceled all public appearances because of death threats. Trump called her “unhinged” with an “extraordinarily low IQ” and claimed – incorrectly – that she had threatened to harm his supporters. Then came top congressional Democrats, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, both blasting Waters for encouraging such incivility. Said Schumer: “If you disagree with a politician . . . vote them out of office. But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

Oh yes it is, Senator. The Civil Rights Act did not flow majestically from a reasoned debate by golden tongued orators. It took years of street protests and massive harassment of political opponents. As Jonathan Bernstein, a former university professor, wrote for Bloomberg this week, “From the American Revolution on, the spoils of freedom, fair treatment and equality have not gone to the patient and polite. The spoils have gone to those who are incensed and determined, unafraid and unashamed to raise more than a little hell.”

No, embarrassing cabinet members in restaurants and other direct actions are not going to end our Trumpian nightmare. But they are viable tactics in a broader strategy to do just that, by flipping at least one of the two congressional chambers in November and removing Trump from office in the 2020 election, if not before. It’s all about voter turnout, tapping into the passion of those millennials who cheered Maxine Waters’ call to action, reaching blacks, Latinos and others, disenchanted with both parties, but ready to act now against a president intent on marginalizing them. Those actions pull them in, strengthen the movement and evolve into votes.

As a personal matter of style, I will continue to choose civility. If I owned a restaurant, I’d let Sarah Huckabee Sanders eat there. On the other hand, if someone tosses her out because of the abhorrent policies she has to defend, it reminds us all that these are not ordinary times. It reminds us that the rules of political discourse have to change in order to accommodate the toxicity of an environment that threatens the values we hold dear.

We don’t have to become Trump to beat Trump, but neither should we cling blindly to an honor code of civility when dealing with a lying thug who takes children away from their parents and emboldens bigotry of every stripe. That, Senator Schumer, is what is really not American.

HOMELAND INSECURITY: A RUSSIAN ATTACK & A PRESIDENT WHO WON’T STOP IT

Remember that old salty story about a kid trying to shovel his way through a towering pile of horse manure, convinced there had to be a pony in there somewhere? It really captures the whole Russia/Trump/FBI brouhaha. Peel away the layers of dung – the Comey memos, the dueling claims of obstruction and vindication, the etymology of “hope” as a command – and there lies the nearly forgotten source of this mess: a foreign adversary’s attempt to sabotage our democracy.

A daily barrage of Trumpian subplots is distracting us from the compelling and frightening antecedent that started everything. That is mind boggling for those of us who grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when, as kids, we were less concerned with the bogeyman than we were with a shoe-pounding Nikita Khrushchev and his promise to bury us. Fifty-some years later, Russia is caught screwing with our elections and the country gets all wrapped up in peripheral stuff, like whether the fired FBI director is a leaker.

Every U.S. intelligence agency has been unequivocal: Russia executed an extensive and elaborate plot to interfere with last year’s election. Not one cabinet secretary or member of Congress has disputed that assertion. In fact, most of them, including the Republican House speaker and Senate majority leader, have publically acknowledged Russia’s tampering. There is only one office holder in Washington who refuses to accept this reality: President Donald J. Trump. This president has not only consistently pooh-poohed the growing mountain of evidence that Russia interfered in our election, he has denigrated all of the Congressional and FBI investigations on the matter, calling them “witch hunts”.

Asha Rangappa is a former FBI agent and currently an associate dean at Yale Law School. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, she offered a singularly unique take on James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. The real bombshell, she wrote, had nothing to do with Trump’s attempt to stop an investigation or Comey releasing his notes to the media. Instead, Rangappa argued, it was the president’s unwillingness “to preserve, protect and defend” the country from Russia’s attack on our free elections.

“In the nine times Trump met with or called Comey,” she wrote, “it was always to discuss how the investigation into Russia’s election interference was affecting him personally, rather than the security of the country. He apparently cared little about understanding either the magnitude of the Russian intelligence threat, or how the FBI might be able to prevent another attack in future elections.”

This is a president who has not lifted a finger to protect our democratic elections from an outside attack. This is huge, and we should never, for a moment, lose sight of it. The accusation of Trump campaign collusion with the Russians is speculative and unproven right now. Thanks to Comey’s testimony and recent news reports, we know a little more about a possible obstruction of justice charge against Trump, but it remains a close and unsettled question. Yet, by refusing to even acknowledge a foreign adversary’s interference in our election, the president has placed his personal ego needs above his sworn duty to protect this country.

Trump’s repeated refusal to deal constructively with the Russian election threat grows more acute with every revelation of the depth and breadth of the 2016 intrusion. Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that Russia’s cyber-attacks on our electoral system were much more extensive than originally thought. According to that reporting, Russian hackers made their way into the official voting records of 39 states. Bloomerg quoted a senior intelligence official who expressed fear that the 2016 foray into local election systems gives the Russians three years to use that knowledge in plotting an attack for 2020. Comey echoed that concern in his testimony last week. “They’re coming after America,” he said. “They will be back.”

Donald Trump is doing absolutely nothing to protect us from that attack. That, it seems to me, needs to be part of the Resistance’s messaging in the days ahead. There is no need to prove collusion or obstruction to make this patently obvious charge stick. The Russians are coming after us, and our president is doing nothing about it. If any of the pending investigations subsequently reveal evidence of collusion or obstruction, then his despicable nonfeasance becomes all the more aggravated.

Trump’s obstinate insistence on giving Russia a pass on its attack on our electoral system has the potential to transcend partisanship, even in this bitterly divided country. Just yesterday, in a remarkable rebuke of the White House, the Senate voted 97 to 2 to block any efforts by Trump to scale back sanctions against Russia. That a Republican-controlled Senate doesn’t trust this president on a critical matter of national security is a ready-made lightening rod for changing some minds in Trumpville.

If this nightmare is going to end before 2020, those minds need to be changed. Forget all that nuanced legal analysis about grounds for impeachment. The process is political, not legal. Even if Democrats won back the House and Senate in 2018, an incredibly heavy lift, a two-thirds Senate vote is required for removing a president. An impeachment has to be bipartisan. Congressional Republicans have never been comfortable with Trump, but they have no appetite for incurring the wrath of his base in their own elections. As that base deflates, however, the whole dynamic changes. Trump’s approval rating has been slipping by a percent or two each week and is currently at 37 percent. Since February, a third of that group downgraded from “strongly supports” to “supports”. The momentum is slow but steady. All the more reason to shine the spotlight on the unassailable narrative of Russia’s plot to sabotage America’s elections, and Trump’s refusal to do anything about it. After all, protecting the country from an enemy attack has always been a bedrock value of conservatism.

NO WINNERS IN WHITE HOUSE VERSION OF CELEBRITY APPRENTICE

So, it has come to this. In our toxically polarized world, the battle for moral superiority between left and right rests on a surrogate matchup of Kathy Griffin and Ted Nugent, with an undercard starring Bill Maher and Tila Tequila.
In one ring, battling to the death for bragging rights as the most offensive and despicable, is Griffin, clutching a simulation of Donald Trump’s severed skull, and Nugent, with thoughts of an assassinated Obama dancing in his head. In the racist ring is Trump supporter and reality star Tequila, flashing her finest anti-black-and-brown Nazi salute, facing off against TV host Maher and his it’s-only-a-joke N-word banter. Que Michael Buffer: “Let’s get ready to rumble!”
Sadly, the rumbling never stops. Like tinnitus’s constant ringing, this high-pitched, acrimonious roar shows no sign of abating any time soon. It’s enough to make you long for simpler times when a celebrity saying stupid stuff was . . . well, just a celebrity saying stupid stuff. As opposed to an escalation of our endless ideological war.
The latest battleground surfaced last week when, for some inexplicable reason, Griffin, a comedian, released a picture of herself holding a faux bloody Trump head. There was no context, no lead-up, no punchline and, as far as anyone can tell, no laughter. As the excrement hit the fan, Griffin offered the standard comedic defense that she was only trying to be funny, that crossing the line of appropriateness is the heart of humor. Yeah but, there still has to be a hook to make the inappropriateness funny. Years ago, Joan Rivers used this line in her stand-up: “Boy George is all England needs – another queen who can’t dress.” Inappropriate? Sure, but it had a hook, a context that got a laugh – even from Boy George. All Griffin had was a bloody head.

As a result, her world began to crumble. Despite her apology, CNN fired Griffin from her standing New Year’s Eve gig with Anderson Cooper, who independently blasted her for the prank. Most of her summer tour venues have canceled on her. At a tearful press conference Friday, the comedian said Trump was out to get her, insisting, with a level of self-absorption rivaling the president’s, that the White House is “using me as the shiny object so that nobody is talking about his (Trump’s) FBI investigation.” Obviously, it would take much more than a bully comic holding another bully’s head to divert attention from this FBI investigation.

Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook exploded into a fully involved proxy war. The president’s fans, predictably, expressed wildly indignant outrage over Griffin’s severed Trump head bit, many proposing acts of retribution outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. Then came a quick liberal chorus of “nana nana nana” with posts about Nugent, a 60s rocker who made a sharp right turn, and recently dined with Trump at the White House. Where was the conservative consternation, these posts asked, when Nugent called Obama a “mongrel” and invited him to “suck on my machine gun”? Then came a retrospective of various Obama-in-a-noose memes offered up by his many passionate detractors, raising this bizarre dialectic of moral equivalency: images depicting the lynching of our first black president versus a beheading of his successor. If the founding fathers had envisioned social media, the First Amendment would likely have come with an exclusionary clause.

With no ceasefire in sight, the war opened a new front Friday night when sharp-tongued comedian and Trump critic Maher used the N-word on his HBO show, “Real Time”. A guest, Republican Senator Ben Sasse, jokingly invited Maher to Nebraska to “work the fields.” The host’s response: “Work in the fields? Senator, I’m a house n***r.” Maher’s subsequent apology did little to subdue the Twitter rants. Conservatives, still bristling from their loss of Fox News idol Bill O’Reilly, demanded that HBO fire Maher. It was, of course, a tough case for them to make in 140 characters, given their party’s dismal track record on matters of race. So the tweets were mostly a gotcha thing, as in: “Fire him! You know that’s what Democrats would say if Sean Hannity used the word.” That provoked a liberal response about Tila Tequila, a fallen reality TV star and Trump supporter who has said vile things about blacks and Latinos and led a white nationalist audience in a “Heil Trump” salute last fall.

Yet, it was refreshing to see a number of messages from the left, many from black leaders, that unequivocally condemned a white comedian for using a racial epithet that has no business even residing in his vocabulary. It is, indeed, possible to abhor the deeply divisive and Draconian policies of the Trump administration while, at the same time, castigating entertainers of our political stripe when they jettison every line of decency.

Unfortunately, social media lulls us into the illusion of tribalism, complete with its us-versus-them modality. We lob our verbal grenades at anyone who seems to be part of the other side, slicing and dicing with an angry indignation that never stops. When one of our own is attacked, it’s time to re-powder, circle the wagons and fire away again, or so we think. These are, without a doubt, the most emotionally strained and troubled political times many of us have gone through. Our country is as torn and divided as it has been since the Civil War. There is so much at stake. To suggest, for even a moment, that Kathy Griffin is a victim worthy of our attention diminishes and denigrates the real Trump victims, like the 23 million people who would lose medical insurance under his plan, displaced workers denied job retraining benefits under his budget, families split and devastated by the cruelty of his deportations.

So let’s take some deep breaths and try to avoid the peripheral skirmishes that really don’t matter. That will make it easier to focus on the real challenge – reversing the course this country has been on since January 20.

POST ELECTION BLUES? YOU’LL FIND NO ESCAPE IN FLORIDA

Having just returned from a protracted stay in Florida, I’m still trying to untangle the state’s incongruous dualism. There is nothing more radiant than ocean waves glistening under a January sun. Yet, you don’t have to venture far from the beach to find a sea of tacky souvenir shops offering, in almost parody fashion, blow-up sea urchins and plastic alligator heads that glow in the dark. They can be ignored if you try hard enough, focusing instead on the elegant palm trees and luscious greenery adorning Florida’s highways and byways. Then again, such aesthetic vegetation is interspersed with gigantic billboards, split evenly between adult sex shops and personal injury lawyers. Florida folks are pragmatic. If a marital aid breaks at an inopportune time, they know who to call for punitive damages.

And then there’s politics. Florida and its 29 electoral votes have long been the southern belle of presidential elections, drawing more attention than any state below the Mason-Dixon line, and most of them above it. Its hanging chads took center stage in the 2000 legal battle that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush. President Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012. Two of the supporting actors in last year’s Republican primary drama – Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – are Floridians. But Donald Trump beat them both and went on to capture the state’s electoral prize in November. With that sometimes-you-win-and-sometimes-you-lose background, you’d think Florida voters would be in a Que Sera, Sera kind of place over the pending Trump inauguration.

That’s decidedly not the case. The most dramatic evidence of the deep personal tension felt by many Floridian liberals came in an unlikely venue. Micanopy is a small, beautifully peaceful, antediluvian town a few miles south of Gainesville. Its main drag is filled with shops selling crafts, antiques and home furnishings. We spent an hour in one of those stores and drew an occasional glance from the owner, who undoubtedly marked us as out-of-towners. She approached us after the other customers had left and asked where we were from. Upon learning that we lived a few miles outside of Washington, D.C., she withdrew into a brief and pensive silence. After mentally calculating the political demographics, she took a chance.

“I just don’t know what to do,” she told us. “This whole thing with Trump. I’ve never been so scared.” My wife, Melissa, and I nodded and smiled, much to the store owner’s relief.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, “I figured you were safe. You just never know. So many customers are for Trump. It’s just awful. I can’t let on and I don’t even want to talk to them. I’ve never been through anything like this. My candidates have lost in the past and life goes on. But this time is different. I am scared of this guy. Some of his supporters scare me even more. The day after the election, I thought I would close the shop and sell the business so I wouldn’t have to deal with them. But it’s been my life. I don’t know what to do.”

It’s not just a Florida thing. New York City is offering employees counseling services and other support for dealing with Trump’s election. Therapists throughout the nation have reported an overwhelming caseload of patients needing help with their anxiety and depression over the incoming Trump administration. Staffers at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline say they have been swamped with calls from people in deep distress with feelings of hopelessness and betrayal over the election.

It’s a safe bet that this level of angst has to do with more than differences of opinion over tax policy or climate change. By campaigning against what he called “political correctness,” Trump, intentionally or unintentionally, validated the misogyny, racism and homophobia that progressives have been fighting for decades. For people affected by identity politics, this is deeply personal.

A man who sexually assaulted women and made disparaging comments based on race, religion and nationality will become president of the United States by the end of the week. A bully who delights in punching below his weight and demeaning anyone who gets in his way will soon be the leader of the free world.

Those of us who are bothered by our new reality have been counseled by Trump voters to “get over it and move on.” They are half right. We will never – and should never – get over the fact that our new president is the antithesis of the character and values we struggled to instill in our children: kindness, inclusiveness, fairness, decency and honesty. He is who he is. We need to accept that and move on. As of 12:01 p.m. Friday, we’re playing for keeps. It’s no longer about obnoxious early-morning tweets or a Fox news soundbite. Now it’s about policies and programs, legislation and executive orders. We who believe that America’s greatness lies in its diversity, including all of those struggling in the shadows, need to focus on keeping our dream alive.

Yes, this week’s inauguration represents one of the finest attributes of America’s unique democracy: the peaceful transfer of power based on the will of the electorate. Yet, another equally powerful piece of our system is one that allows citizens to rise up in agitation and peaceful protest when leaders betray the values and principles that made our country great. That’s why Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington is just as important to this inauguration as Friday’s swearing in.

Although our candidate lost, her campaign theme continues to thrive. Starting with Saturday’s march, and continuing every day for the next four years, we are, indeed, Stronger Together.

OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE POLITICAL DIVIDE — HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

There has been an abundance of trepidation about Thanksgiving this year. The fear and trembling is over the prospect of bringing Trump and Clinton voters to the same family table just 16 days after the Election from Hell. The New York Times and the Washington Post ran long trend articles about family holiday plans shattering to pieces in the wake of a divisive election. They quoted psychotherapists worried about their patients’ ability to talk turkey and politics with loved ones who voted differently.

Poor Thanksgiving. It hasn’t been under such an ominous cloud since the great Cranberry Cancer Scare of 1959. One woman, a distraught Hillary backer with two pro-Trump brothers was beside herself. “Thanksgiving,” she said, “has always been a time for people with shared values to join together in a celebration of peace and love.”

Really? She hasn’t been at my Thanksgiving dinners. Let’s not mistake a Norman Rockwell painting for the real thing. After all, this holiday got its start in 1621 when the Indians and the white immigrant pilgrims who were trying to steal their land decided to chill for a day and break bread together. According to the history books, it was a bountiful gathering and a good time was had by all. But the next day they went right back to fighting over property rights, a work still in progress 395 years later. (See Standing Rock Sioux v. Dakota Access Pipeline.)

Yet, the original Thanksgiving taught us a remarkably helpful lesson in conflict management. It demonstrated the value of engaging with people whose thoughts, interests or backgrounds are different than our own. It is a lesson well worth heeding today, now more than ever.

I can’t remember a time since the civil rights and Vietnam War struggles of the 1960s when this nation has been more splintered and on edge. Gallup released a poll today showing that 77% of Americans see the country as deeply divided on “the most important values.” That’s the most division Gallup ever measured since it started polling on the question. People were also asked whether they thought Donald Trump would unite or further divide us. Not surprisingly, we are split on that issue as well, with 45% saying he will unite us and 49% predicting more division.

This chasm has been building for some time and runs deep into the country’s psyche. There is no quick fix and it certainly doesn’t need to be relitigated before the pumpkin pie is served. On the other hand, a nation hurting from division will not heal in separation. At some point, we have to start listening to each other. Really listening, not just talking and shouting and interrupting. Hearing each other is the first step toward looking for common ground.

For those of us on the losing end of this election, that’s a tall order. It probably means enduring a smirking gloat and fist pump from a pro-Trump cousin or uncle. A couple of deep breaths will help. So will the silent recollection of two consecutive Obama victories when you all somehow made it through dinner without acts of violence. We have four long, rough years ahead of us in this tug-of-war over America’s values. It just seems so incredibly sad to start the journey by avoiding family members who didn’t vote the way we did. If there was enough love and connection to establish a Thanksgiving ritual together, there ought to be a way to enjoy another joyous meal in that company, regardless of the Electoral College vote count.

If we can’t bridge this political divide in our families, we’re going to have a real tough time pulling this country back together. I’m not sure just when it was that we started to segregate ourselves by thoughts and beliefs. It’s happened with cable news, and political websites and social media. As the Washington Post noted recently, it has happened with D.C. bars and restaurants. Bipartisan social gatherings were once commonplace among the city’s politicos, but now they tend to drink and dine by party affiliation. Nobody is listening to the other side, and the outcome has been legislative intransigence.

So why not start small this Thanksgiving? Don’t cancel plans to feast in a mixed partisan gathering. Let us all gather together, the elites and the deplorables, with good cheer and low expectations, with a vow to listen more and proselytize less. And if all that fails, turn on the football game.

Happy Thanksgiving!