The insults need to stop

We are losing the ability to discuss differences

By: Mike Kelly
columnist
USA Today Network

..... Sometimes, seemingly different events can shine a singular light on the soul of our wounded nation. Here are two such moments: The first took place on the Saturday evening earlier this month [07/13/2024] after a would-be assassin shot and wounded former President Donald Trump. The second took place eight days later - when President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign. [07/21/2024]
..... In the hours after Trump, with blood trickling from his right ear from a bullet, was led to safety by U.S. Secret Service agents. Biden picked up the phone and called the former president to ask if he was OK. We are told the call was brief, perhaps, less than a minute. Biden wished Trump well. Trump thanked Biden and later said they had a "nice conversation.
..... Fast forward to a week - to another Saturday evening. Joe Biden, was wounded but in a very different way.
..... After weeks of dodging the truth and some alarming poll numbers, Biden, 81, finally accepted the fact that America's voters felt he was too old to run for reelection. With the help of several aides, he drafted a letter announcing that he planned to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. Then he went to bed to sleep on it.
..... The next day, Sunday, [07/21/2024] Biden set the letter to the nation at 1:46 PM. forty-three minutes later, at 2:29 PM. Trump, under the ironic tagline "@realDolandTrump," took to his social media platform, Truth Social, with this response: "Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President and is certainly not fit to serve - And never was!"The message went on for another 92 words. Trump, who is 78, will surely be the subject of questions about his ability to serve into his eighties if he is reelected, did not ask if Biden was OK. In case anyone wondered.
..... what happened in those two attempts at communication between two proud political rivals is just another example of how deeply scarred our nation has become. Simply put: Both sides are talking past each thee. And now that America is facing a very different presidential election, with Vice president Kamala Harris replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee against Trump, the nation needs to ask a fundamental question about itself as it stumbles toward November: [2024] When are we going to talk to each other? and stop the insults?
..... It goes without saying that Trump in his Truth Social missive, sent after Biden's announcement to drop out of the presidential race, did not need to remind the nation how he felt about Biden's politics - or the fact that Biden beat Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Trump has been screaming that message for nearly four years. would it have been too much for Trump to at least wish Biden well? Or acknowledge Biden's half-century of service to the nation? or to just say. "good luck.

What about all the insults hurled at MAGA?

.... At this point in this column, I can hear the MAGA crowd asking their own grievance-steeped questions: What about all those insults Biden and the Democrats have tossed at trump - and us?
..... Well, MAGA-world is right to ask such a question. The scars are numerous and well-chronicled.
..... Many MAGA loyalists still talk about Hillary Clinton's snooty :basket of deplorable" put-down of Trump supporters shut weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Or Barack Obama's equally elitists cometary in 2008 when he said the loss of jobs in small Midwestern towns left residents to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them." In recent months, the Biden campaign was hardly shy about comparing Trump to Adolph Hitler or referring to the former president as a threat to democracy and unhinged.
..... The dilemma here is that both sides have legitimate policy arguments they want to debate. Biden;s economic and immigration policies are worthy of criticism. And Trump own words, not to mention his behavior, need scrutiny in a serious manner. Trump is, after all, a convicted felon and on the losing end of several civil judgments including one that found his business liable for years of fraud. Let's also not forget cases pending charges in two federal cases and another case based in Georgia.
..... All that is worthy of debate -- and explanation. But the name-calling and put-downs keep getting in the way.
..... This problem goes far beyond Biden and Trump. The issues themselves are deeply divisive. Trump's followers, for example, are deeply bother by such so called "culture war" issues as abortion, the movement for transgender rights, efforts to limit firearms and race-based factors in hiring. It's hardly coincidental that those issues have found their way into major rulings in recent years by the U.S. Supreme Court.

How can we ever reach common ground?

..... By the same token, Democrats are equally bothered by the role that Trump reportedly played in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and in stoking the continuing belief by MAGA supporters and many ordinary Republicans that Biden was not legitimately elected to the presidency. Likewise, Democrats are correct in pointing out Trump's cozy relationship with white supremaci8sts and, in recent days, the coded racial put-downs of Harris by Republicans as a product of "DEI" - diversity, equity and inclusion. Does anyone need to remind America that Harris was actually elected statewide in California as the state's attorney general and then as its U.S. Senator -- and then was elected vice president by the nation's voters? And while we're at it, is it too much to ask for Trump to correctly pronounce Harris' first name, "Kamela"?
..... I could cite many more such arguments - from both sides. But you get the point. The current presidential race has brought together deeply serious and consequential policy differences. If the arguments over those differences are framed by name-calling and put-downs, how can the nation resolve anything? Or reach any sense of common ground or compromise?
..... The problem here is that compromise is not possible on some of these policy differences. Abortion is one example of this sort of dilemma. If you believe abortion is murder, how can you find common ground with the pro-choice movement? Likewise, if you believe that he decision to have an abortion lies solely with a pregnant woman and not with politicians, how can you find common ground with those who want to regulate that choice by passing laws.
..... America's politics have long been home to such difficult policy dilemmas. But we are rapidly losing the ability to discuss those differences without name-calling.
..... After I read Trump's put-down of Biden, who too a personally courageous and humiliating step to end his presidential run, I wondered if Trump had second thoughts about describing Biden as "not fit to run for president" and "certainly not fit to serve."
..... Were those words perhaps too nasty?
..... Nah. the next day, Trump, in an interview, called Biden "the worst president in the history of the United States by far."
..... This is what America has been reduced to. Do we need to remind ourselves that the nation faces important questions over the economy and immigration, infrastructure and the fact that war is raging in Ukraine and on the Gaza Strip? To name just a few concerns?
..... Maybe it's time to stop the name calling.
..... Don't count on it.

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