Given the wide range of choices, it's hard to put them in order; but at or very near the top of the list of outrages today's teabagging Rs attribute to President Obama is the idea that he's been "divisive." It becomes clear that the word, to right-wing screamers, means "saying and doing stuff we don't like. Calling out lies and deceptions. Pointing out consequences. Daring to discuss the stuff we'd prefer to keep under the rug. Like racism. Telling us things we don't want to hear." Ted Cruz, Donald Trump? Not divisive. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter? Butter wouldn't melt. Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity? Alex Jones? Paragons of inclusiveness. And that emerging hope of "the establishment?" Yeah, how about him?
Marco Rubio's predictable, swift, nasty, and ignorant response to Obama's speech at a mosque showcases perfectly the idiocy of the charge. Watch the president's speech, and find the "pitting of people against one another" to which young Marco refers, in horror. Let me know where it is. Ask yourself which party is pitching Islamophobia. Deny that there've been countless acts against Muslims in the US, or that it's being rhetorically encouraged by the top R candidates.
Today's Republican party (and, yet again, let me emphasize the fact that I say "today's," because it wasn't always so) has made ignoring reality central to its march toward plutocracy. (The theocracy grift, most likely, is less of a goal than a means to the end. And by "end" I mean pretty much the end of everything. And who better to get to ignore the real agenda than people whose religious paranoia goes to eleven, eclipsing all other issues.) That's the case whether it's climate change, science in general, racism, income inequality, public education, energy, and so much more. Because addressing those pressing problems is inimical to the creation of their oligarchical plutocracy. Distractions from what's really important: succoring their wealthy controllers, suckering everyone else.
Imagine a picnic, people drinking beer, having a grand old time, while gulping down potato salad that's been sitting in the sun for two days, getting that greenish sheen. Someone walks by (maybe, you know, someone who knows these things), has a look, and says, Hey people, you better stop eating that salad; it's gonna make you sick. It could even kill you. People look up from the table, pissed, and say, Go away, asshole. You're ruining our picnic. And you're being divisive.
And that's exactly what's going on.
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