George Rebane
President Trump appears to have entered a new phase of his administration with the escalation of this Tweet Travails and the second faltering of ‘Replace and Repeal’ while tax reform waits (withers?) in the wings and the national budget is not even on the back burner (‘Continuing Resolutions’ don’t count). When MOCs return from their 4th of July speech makings, they will have only about 33 working days left in the fiscal year unless McConnell makes them stay in the Capitol during the dog days of DC – remember, Washington was a mosquito infested swamp before they did the original draining.
So we continue hereunder the discussion thread exhaustively expanded (over 230 comments) under ‘Sandbox – 27jun17’ that involves trials and tribulations of President Trump.
[2jul17 update] Ms Amanda Ripley, senior fellow at the Emerson collective, wrote a heartwarming appeal in the 1jul17 WSJ entitled ‘America, Meet America’ that recognized the historical polarization of our country and offered her best shot at how we could all just get along – her shot missed badly. Her essay was filled with the pabulum advice of just getting together and talking about things other than the relevant ideological differences people have. Such meetings, according to Ms Ripley, would then start the healing process, and before you know it a kumbaya epiphany descends to heal all schisms. Her anecdotal episodes offer no proof of her thesis. But that kind of commentary illustrates why such placebo palliatives utterly fail simply because they don’t recognize the seminal nature of today’s schism.
On the other hand, WSJ editor James Taranto interviews noted historian Allen Guelzo in ‘Divided America Stands – Then and Now’ to discover our historical schisms and how the current one compares. Bottom line, we are divided now as never before save during the prelude to the War Between the States (it wasn’t a ‘civil war’). Mr Guelzo does not think that we’re on the brink of reprising that conflict simply because then the differences then were regionally compact, inviting a clear ‘we’re here and you’re there, we should separate’ attitude. Today our differences are perhaps even more fundamental and nuanced, but they are held by Americans who are more than less marbled together across our country, there is no clear ‘the Left is here, and the Right is there’. Professor Guelzo does an excellent job leading an exploration and explication of our multifarious ideological terrain from which the reader can assess the existential effectiveness of calls for a national kumbaya.
‘The beatings (by both sides) will stop only after morale improves.’
rebanesruminations.com 
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