Why the idea of uniting the country is ridiculous

Joe Biden includes uniting the people instead of dividing them among his intentions, should he be elected president.  He will no doubt make that effort. As a senator, Biden's congenial and straight-forward personality earned him a reputation as someone who could engage with the opposition party in productive work.  On crucial issues, he often assumed the role of conciliator.  The New Yorker notes that "Joe Biden has long valorized comity and respect in the political arena, but the country’s deepest cleavages are now imprinted on Americans’ party affiliations."

Even the most optimistic patriots recognize that the presidency of Donald Trump may well have solidified a moral animosity that cannot be bridged.  He is  a vile, thoroughly depraved person.  Even if he is removed from the presidency, those who support him and subscribe to his ways will remain to be dealt with.  His presidency has revealed that a significant population of the American people is committed to malevolence.  Their politics is designed to serve their favorite hatreds through which they wish to impose cruelty, degradation, and oppression on others,

The divide is not merely political about how the country should be run.  The divide is a very fundamental one between decency and indecency.  The issue is if decent people would be so gullible as to make an alliance with the indecent whose words and actions cannot be trusted. 

The Supreme Court nominations have starkly defined underlying moral differences that have emerged within the Democratic and Republican parties.  In the nomination  process, the Republicans have put on a demonstration of dishonesty, betrayal, and chicanery that is now indelibly engraved into our history.  This demonstration cannot be ignored.   It is part of the definition of what the United States has become.

When Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, it was eight months before the next election.  The Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, insisted that the nomination was too close to the next election and refused to give Garland a hearing before the Senate.  Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by Trump two months before the next election.  The Republicans have ignored all the rules, which they formulated, and have expedited Barrett's nomination so that she will be voted onto the court before the election. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee also had a rule that at least two members of the opposition party must be in attendance to conduct official business.  The Democrats protested the contrived nomination process by boycotting the committee vote on Barrett.  The Republicans chose to blithely ignore that rule, too.  So, they have established that procedural rules don't mean a thing.  What the Republicans have so dramatically demonstrated is not merely hypocrisy; it's treachery.  And that demonstration is changing the way citizens will think about and respond to their government.  The Republicans have disproved that we are a nation of laws. They have  long given up any claim to being the party of Lincoln.  We are, in fact, a nation of political whims about what is regarded as rules and precedents.  It is hard to take laws and rules made under such capricious circumstances seriously.  It is humiliating and demoralizing to live in a sham democracy.

If Joe Biden is elected president, he can probably get some people to work together.  But he cannot change what the people who strive for decency have learned about fellow Americans who practice the Trump cult.  He cannot change people from teaching their children and grandchildren to avoid the kind of people who wear MAGA hats and fly Trump flags for the same reason that we teach them to avoid people who fly Nazi flags or worship Stalin. They are intellectually and morally pernicious.

Some people claim they voted for Trump because they thought he was a successful businessman who would bring organizational skills and resources to government.  But they had to ignore the way he behaved.  And they had to ignore the press, including the conservative press, that gave full accounts of Trump's nefarious ways in business and society.  However, most people who voted for and supported Trump did so because he is precisely what they want for themselves and the country.  That is a fact of what the United States has become.  They will be there to obstruct and demolish anything Joe Biden tries to do, no matter what deranged and degrading tactics will achieve their purpose.  

Our ancestors left the Old World and came to America to escape the kind of world Trump represents and to be part pf a New World of democratic decency and integrity.  But those qualities of life have been displaced by malice, which dwells under MAGA hats and Trump flags.  

Joe Biden might be able to get a majority of Americans to work together and even inspire a democratic reformation  But we have seen Trump and his minions.  And no decent person would be so gullible or insane as to reconcile with their values.  It would be like  deliberately contracting Covid-19.  Making nice to the cult of indecency would divert any attempt to put America back on the course of decency.

If Joe Biden wins the election, the American ethic may be kept alive to reform the country back into a benevolent democracy.  If he doesn't, it would be insane for the decent to submit to the indecent.  It would time to lower the flag and play Taps one last time.  

And let the people who want genuine liberty, equality, and justice do what is necessary to find America again.