Anger is palpable

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Has there ever been a presidential campaign — in the past century — that has evoked the kind of visceral anger between devotees of both major-party presidential candidates than this one?

Donald Trump’s minions are accusing Joe Biden’s fans of fomenting socialism. Biden’s side argues that Trump is unfit to serve as president. Trump’s team is suggesting that Biden’s mental acuity is slipping. Biden’s team says Trump has become unhinged.

They sides now are talking to each other. Trumpkins accuse Bidenistas of hating America. Reverse those accusations and we hear the Biden team suggesting that Trump’s side favors Russian interests over American interests.

Who is to blame for this?

Here it comes. I blame Donald John Trump fully, completely and without equivocation.

Trump has fomented this kind of anger with his own fiery rhetoric. His campaign launch in 2015 with a blistering attack on Latin American immigrants and continued with a call to ban all travel into the country from those who live in mostly Muslim countries.

It has hurtled downhill from there.

The nadir of Trump’s presidency might have been when he called Ku Klux Klansmen and Nazis “good people.” Hmm. My dear old Dad would have come totally unglued were he around to hear that one, given that he went to war in 1942 to fight those very Nazis.

The litany of divisive rhetoric is too lengthy to recount here. You know what I’m talking about. The consequence has been anger that has filtered into the ranks of those who adore Donald Trump and those who loathe him.

Joe Biden Jr. promises to heal the nation. He wants to restore our national “soul.” I pray that the American soul isn’t permanently damaged by the battering it has received during the tenure of the Donald Trump’s time as president.