More than Ever - Our House is Divided

Image from Newsday

‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ These words spoken by an Illinois legislator in 1858 (pre-Civil War) about slavery.  His name was Abraham Lincoln. He also said the following: 

I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

Lincoln was quite prescient. Just a few years later the Civil War broke out after which slavery was abolished. 

How appropriate those very words are today. The country is about as divided as it can be. Reflected by enthusiastic Trump voters on one side and Trump haters on the other. 

There was a time not all that long ago where people that differed politically with each other did not become enemies. One could be a conservative with liberal friends and a liberal with conservative friends. That might still be true in some instances. But increasingly the divisiveness has become so bitter, that one side cannot only not understand the other, they cannot stand one another. 

This did not happen overnight. We have been going in that direction for quite some time. But there little doubt that the previous President exacerbated it to the current level. His appeal to supporters is as unprecedented as is the disgust he generates in those that can’t stand him. No matter how anyone might feel about him on either side of the political aisle one thing should be obvious to both. The ex-President was one of the most divisive Presidents in American history. If not THE most divisive  

This was reflected by Los Angeles Times columnist Virginia Heffernan in aNewsdaycolumn entitled: “What can you do about the Trumpites next door?” that went viral. Heffernan expressed contempt for Trump voters who plowed her driveway without being asked. Jonathan Tobin writes: 

No doubt thinking that she spoke for many of the 81 million Americans who voted for President Joe Biden last November, Heffernan explored what she thought was a perplexing dilemma.

She views the 74 million who voted for Donald Trump as not merely mistaken, but as bad people to be viewed as the moral equivalent of Hezbollah terrorists or French citizens who collaborated with the Nazis. So what should a right-thinking person like her do when the terrorists/Nazi voters next door treat you with neighborly kindness? Heffernan is genuinely conflicted about the answer. 

We are living interesting times. The emotion generated by the ex-President has changed how we view each other. We are ‘house divided’. What happened on January 6^th is one manifestation of that division. Hopefully it will be the last. I shudder to think what might result if something like this is  tried again. We may not be on the precipice of another civil war. But the enmity between sides seems to be not all that different than it was in Lincoln’s time. The possibility of something even more tragic happening is very real. 

But even if it doesn’t the idea that we can no longer get along with each other at all saddens me. Especially as it pertains to my own people. It is no secret the the majority of Orthodox Jews support the ex-President. Many of them passionately. In some cases so much so that like many of Trump’s non Jewish supporters they buy completely into his narrative. Believing every lie as gospel.

 Meanwhile the Trump haters are just as intense in their hatred as the supporters are in their love of the man. They see him as so evil that only people with no character at all would support him. Treating them with contempt. On the other hand Trump’s enthusiastic Orthodox supporters cannot understand how anyone that calls them self Orthodox cannot love him the way they do. 

That has bred an unprecedented level of political divisiveness between Orthodox Jews. The idea that fellow Orthodox Jews that have so much in common by virtue of their observance nonetheless see each other with so much contempt because of politics is something I would have never thought possible. 

Not that there are not other things that divide us. There are plenty. And there is plenty of contempt between factions. But American politics has never been one of them. 

I see it here all the time. Maybe not in so many words. But in the way each side expresses their support or contempt for Trump. 

Don’t we have enough to argue and fight about? Why can’t we all accept the fact that there are good people on both sides of the the Trump issue? And not see how our own views as the only valid ones.  It is so sad when a person does a kindness cannot be appreciated because of who he supports politically. It is doubly sad when this happens to us. Is this where we are headed?