{"id":33891,"date":"2018-11-29T01:04:36","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T01:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=33891"},"modified":"2018-11-29T01:04:36","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T01:04:36","slug":"hating-the-political-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=33891","title":{"rendered":"Hating the political climate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/angry_trump_0.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-33034\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/angry_trump_0-300x207.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/angry_trump_0-300x207.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/angry_trump_0-768x529.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/angry_trump_0-1024x705.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/angry_trump_0.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mom always taught me that <em>hating<\/em> anyone was a step too far. One shouldn&#8217;t hate, she said.<\/p>\n<p>OK, Mom, but you won&#8217;t mind if I declare my unabashed, unapologetic <em>hatred<\/em> for the political climate that has infected the atmosphere. I&#8217;m glad Mom and Dad aren&#8217;t around to see what has happened to our nation . . . not that either of them were particularly political.<\/p>\n<p>Who&#8217;s to blame for this? I&#8217;m going to lay most of it at the feet of the man elected to &#8220;unify&#8221; the country. The president of the United States promised to be a unifier once he took office. Donald Trump touts his &#8220;promises made, promises kept.&#8221; Mr. President, you have failed miserably at keeping this promise.<\/p>\n<p>Trump doesn&#8217;t own this poisonous atmosphere exclusively. I&#8217;ll concede readily that his political foes continue to whip up the frenzy against him. I also will concede that many of them &#8212; I include myself &#8212; were stunned speechless Election Night 2016 when the TV networks and other news outlets declared Trump the winner over Hillary Rodham Clinton.<\/p>\n<p>At one level, it&#8217;s hard to fathom that event happening. Thus, it well might be that we haven&#8217;t gotten over it.<\/p>\n<p>So, Trump knows that. Has he done anything to reach out? Has he sought to mollify the concerns of those who opposed him at the ballot box, those who comprise a solid plurality of Americans who voted for the candidate who <em>lost<\/em> the Electoral College?<\/p>\n<p>No. He hasn&#8217;t. Indeed, he has fanned the embers, whipping them into a firestorm. He speaks only to his &#8220;base,&#8221; the roughly 38 percent of Americans who stand by their guy. He fires &#8217;em up! He speaks of waves of criminals pouring into the country to commit mayhem; he talks about building that damn wall across our southern border; he threatens to shut the government down if Congress doesn&#8217;t pay for it (he has given up trying to get Mexico to pay for it).<\/p>\n<p>The president had the utter gall to say that there were &#8220;good people on both sides&#8221; of a riot in Charlottesville, Va., in which one of the <em>sides<\/em> comprised Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists. How in the world does that unify anyone?<\/p>\n<p>The debate atmosphere has become toxic to the max. There appears to be no end to it. Democrats and Republicans detest each other. The president detests Democrats, accusing them of <em>wanting<\/em> a nation full of lawbreakers, of wanting to take people&#8217;s guns away from them.<\/p>\n<p>Donald J. Trump is largely responsible for fomenting an atmosphere of poisonous rhetoric.<\/p>\n<p>It is worth every ounce of <em>hate<\/em> I can muster.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mom always taught me that hating anyone was a step too far. One shouldn&#8217;t hate, she said. OK, Mom, but you won&#8217;t mind if I declare my unabashed, unapologetic hatred for the political climate that has infected the atmosphere. I&#8217;m glad Mom and Dad aren&#8217;t around to see what has happened to our nation . &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=33891\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hating the political climate<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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],"tags":[1343,1424,1941,1943,2139,8168],"class_list":["post-33891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop","tag-gop-base","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-political-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33891","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=33891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33892,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33891\/revisions\/33892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}