{"id":27785,"date":"2018-01-31T13:23:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T13:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27785"},"modified":"2018-01-31T13:23:40","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T13:23:40","slug":"didnt-hear-much-unity-mr-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=27785","title":{"rendered":"Didn’t hear much ‘unity,’ Mr. President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I awoke this morning during a lunar eclipse. But the sun rose in the east — just as it has done since the beginning of time.<\/p>\n

However, I don’t believe I awoke to a country more “unified” after last night’s presidential State of the Union speech, which I watched from start to finish.<\/p>\n

The president said his speech would “unify” the nation. Judging from what I witnessed on my TV screen, I didn’t see a unified<\/em> joint congressional session. Republicans stood repeatedly. Democrats sat on their hands.<\/p>\n

Is that somehow different? Is it unique to this<\/em> president in this<\/em> time? Not at all! Republicans sat on their hands when Presidents Clinton and Obama spoke to them, just as Democrats did during President Bush’s two terms (the president’s post-9\/11 speech notwithstanding, when everyone was cheering his rallying cry to a grieving nation).<\/p>\n

Donald Trump’s urging of unity was supplanted by mentioning tax cuts, the repealing of the mandates required by the Affordable Care Act, the battle over immigration and construction of “the wall,” the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice. Divisiveness, anyone?<\/em><\/p>\n

The president took office in the aftermath of arguably the most contentious, bitter campaigns in the past century. He took charge of a nation divided sharply over his election — and it hasn’t gotten any less divided in the year since he took office.<\/p>\n

If the congressional response we witnessed Tuesday night on Capitol Hill is indicative of the nation those men and women represent, well, the president has a lot more work ahead of him.<\/p>\n\n

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I awoke this morning during a lunar eclipse. But the sun rose in the east — just as it has done since the beginning of time. However, I don’t believe I awoke to a country more “unified” after last night’s presidential State of the Union speech, which I watched from start to finish. The president … Continue reading Didn’t hear much ‘unity,’ Mr. President<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[131,849,1112,1424,2245,4314,7269],"class_list":["post-27785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-aca","tag-capitol-hill","tag-congress","tag-donald-trump","tag-immigration","tag-sotu","tag-unity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27787,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27785\/revisions\/27787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}