Karl Rove: America Is Often a Nation Divided

August 27, 2023 Hunter Wallace Culture, Politics 16

Karl Rove has a big cope post in The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ:

America is deeply divided. Our politics is broken, marked by anger, contempt and distrust. We must acknowledge that reality but not lose historical perspective. It’s bad now, but it’s been worse before—and not only during the Civil War.

Let’s look backward and start with the mid-1960s to early ’70s. The nation was bitterly divided over civil rights, the “sexual revolution” and an increasingly unpopular war in Southeast Asia. …

I strongly disagree.

First, while there were race riots, bombings, assassinations and political realignments in the 1960s and 1970s, most Americans still trusted the government, the mainstream media and nearly all institutions. In particular, Richard Nixon yielded when the 1960 election was stolen from him and then resigned as president after the Deep State coup in Watergate. American society began to crack up in the 1960s and 1970s, but those cracks have since expanded into something like the Grand Canyon. The WW2 vets who held the country together in those turbulent years are long gone.

Second, FDR only won 42 states in the 1932 election and 46 states in the 1936 election. The GOP carried 6 and 2 states in those two elections. Politically speaking, the country was not bitterly divided as it is today. Democrats had a sweeping political mandate to implement the New Deal.

Third, the intense political polarization of the Gilded Age in some ways resembles our own, but it never reached the point where the incumbent president had his chief political rival indicted and arrested. No one has ever tried anything like that in American history except arguably Woodrow Wilson with Eugene Debs. Trump is not Eugene Debs. He is not going to throw in the towel like Nixon. No one also ever tried “government by district attorney” which was too crazy even for those heated times.

Fourth, you could say that polarization was worse during the War Between the States when the country actually collapsed and hundreds of thousands of soldiers died on battlefields. Back then, the divide was narrow though. The divide was over slavery, secession and industrialization. The Union and Confederacy were similar in nearly every other way: race, religion, ethnicity, shared history, shared republican ideology and constitutions. Today, the two sides cannot agree on the number of sexes.

Finally, Andrew Jackson complained like Donald Trump about his defeat by John Quincy Adams in the 1824 election. It was a corrupt bargain. Adams never had Jackson arrested and incarcerated though. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were bitter political rivals, but later reconciled.

In 2023, the country is as polarized as it was on the eve of the War Between the States and during the Gilded Age, but the divide is wide, not narrow. It is blurrier. It is not just one or two thorny issues that divides Americans like slavery and secession. Unlike in the 1960s, trust in institutions and authorities has collapsed. Faith in the justice system is collapsing. Faith in elections is collapsing. In contrast, the scale of government and trust in government was rising during the Great Depression and World War II.

This is pure cope.

WSJ:

Ahead of his arrest on Thursday in Georgia, Donald Trump repeatedly told his supporters about the legal peril he faced from charges of election interference. But the danger wasn’t his alone, he said. “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you,” he told a campaign rally.

It was the latest example of the Republican former president employing a potent driver of America’s partisan divide: group identity. Decades of social science research show that our need for collective belonging is forceful enough to reshape how we view facts and affect our voting decisions. When our group is threatened, we rise to its defense …

It has never been this bad in the past. It has never been harder to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. America in 2023 is more like Lebanon or Iraq and getting worse every day.

Note: Look at how much partisan animosity has intensified over the last ten years. Couples increasingly do not get married across partisan lines. Once again, this is similar to tribalized Gilded Age politics, but it is different in the sheer scope of the divide across so many issues.

16 Comments

  2. karl rove supports the invasion of this country. he once said to Tom Tancredo “don’t you ever darken the doorstep of this White House ever again.” He’s a POS

    • The Republican party is there to make us think we have a choice. We don’t. If nothing else, all the insanity over Trump has made this abundantly clear.

      • @More…

        Most folks realize now that the Republican Party, at the national level, ain’t worth a toot.

        They still like Trump, though…

  3. There should be a third category: “A pox on both their houses”. Supporting the Democrats vs. supporting the Republicans or supporting the Republicans vs. supporting the Democrats is like standing on the deck of the Titanic having heated arguments over whether the ship will go down by the stern or down by the bow. The leftward drift of the country has accelerated making more sleepy Whites notice but the Republicans and other “conservatives” are just a safety valve for the opposition to GloboHomo Shopping Mall Empire, not any kind of opposition.

    There hasn’t been a significant difference between Republicans and Democrats in decades. The Democrats want to smash the country into a wall at 100 MPH while the Republicans want to smash the country into a wall at 75 MPH. The Democrats want to burn the bitch down, the Republicans want to loot the bitch like their comrades did when the USSR collapsed. The third category beyond Republican/Democrat is those who have checked out of the political process and are preparing themselves for collapse, that is the wisest thing to do. Getting worked up about what wog said what about whom is like barking at the moon or worrying if the tide will come back in.

    • Old George Wallace saw it over half a century back: “Not a dime’s worth of difference”. Politics in Murika is just a kabuki pillow-fight over which deck-chair feng-shui should be employed on the Titanic. As for the bitch, she has fully earned both her burning and ultimate looting. Sinners can repent but stupid is forever.

  4. “I strongly disagree’.

    I do, too.

    This is NOT the 1960s – not even close.

    It’s way beyond that

    In fact, unable to even agree on what constitutes a safe environment for children, at school, we are divided to an unprecedented degree.

    Hell, we cannot even agree on The English Language anymore.

    KARL ROVE IS BADLY OUT OF TOUCH.

  5. What does it take before White people finally do what should have been done decades ago, namely form a party based on separation from the Global American Empire? In the Civil Rights era, we spoke about States Right when we should have been speaking about separation and independence. We had the crowd back then, now we don’t. I even find radical anti-war activists (and anti-Global American Empire) like Claire Daly in the Irish parliament and Caitlin Johnstone more too my linking than I do modern conservatives!

    • Yes I agree.I often ponder why Whites don’t rise up,why White females so easily betray their own.The Satanic Jewish cloud over us truly has the power of the Devil behind it.This is the End,the One World evil that the Bible told us would happen.Poison in our food,microwaves in the air,and things we don’t even know about beating us down.Even RFK jr admits chemicals in water are making people homos and androgynous.I pray God will give us a reprieve and that Whites will wake up and fight back,only His intervention can do this.The Whites I see daily are less than nothing compared to our ancestors of just 50 years ago.When I look at all the feminized Yankee “Whites”who have flooded my state(SC)I actually feel zero unity or concern for them.Our glorious and perfect White heroes are all in Heaven waiting for us.To sum it up I’ve basically given up on this life and a White revival,although if miracles happen I will embrace it with happiness.

      • @Rebel Roy…

        “I often ponder why Whites don’t rise up.”

        So far, fear, indolence, and self-interest over all has been the order of the day.

        That can change, however, and on a dime.

        This situation may go on for a few more years, but, this country will be unable to last another decade this way, as it is just too painful for too many people.

  6. “America in 2023 is more like Lebanon or Iraq and getting worse every day.”

    Something seems off here

    https://nypost.com/2023/08/28/gop-activist-alex-talcott-fatally-stabbed-in-new-hampshire-home/
    >Investigators are trying to determine if the person who stabbed Talcott was acting in self-defense, the AG’s office said.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_presidential_primary
    >The New Hampshire presidential primary is the first in a series of nationwide party primary elections

  10. I agree that things are polarized, but think that polarization is being used to prevent the passing of the torch to younger generations. It’s lesser of two evils logic that is being used to exclude Millennials, Gen X and Gen Z from the political process. The more polarized it gets, the more they’ll use that to argue that we’re morally obligated to support a side when neither side really represents us.

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