Hating the president is a great American pastime.

But I’m talking about the more pedestrian kind of hate — like you hate when your shoe comes untied or you hate the The Backstreet Boys ’cause ‘N Sync sings your jam.

Maybe you voted for the other guy, so you hate this guy.

But the inauguration of Donald J. Trump brought a whole new kind of vicious enmity to politics.

And despite his critics’ constant assertion that he and his followers are dripping from the fangs, it seems to be the people who most ardently oppose him who’ve upped the game.

Good grief, there’s some hate for Trump out there.

And that emotional drive is often partnered with stunning claims, which — perhaps not merely coincidentally — seem rarely outfitted with explanation.

Donald Trump is an evil man who’s destroyed every tenet of the Constitution and brought on Armageddon, and that’s just the way it is.

To me, the hysteria doesn’t help anything. There’s no American conversation; there’s only memes.

The Commander-in-Chief, among his most fiercest adversaries, has become a cartoon.

Apropos, on Saturday, director Rob Reiner made an announcement: Donald Trump is the most lawless president in history. Or, more accurately — as lawless as any in history.

Powerful claim.

Rob also believes Trump has abused his position in order to “line his pockets”:

The Impeachment process is about to begin. The articles drawn up will be voluminous. Never in our nation’s history has there been a more lawless President. He has continually lied to the American people & has used the Presidency to line his pockets. GOP, history is watching. — Rob Reiner (@robreiner) September 7, 2019

Such is the state in which we’re living.

So is this, speaking of cartoons:

Decades from now people will wonder how we could allow Individual-1 to cause chaos and fraud and destruction for so long, like a Tasmanian Devil on adderall. And we will have no good answers for them.https://t.co/ZvysX67rta — Adam Rifkin 🐼 (@ifindkarma) September 7, 2019

Is that really how history will remember things?

The above tweets are mild examples; there are much, much, much more extreme ones that I don’t care to entertain at present time.

America appears to be currently separated into at least two countries: one which is in utter chaos, where the sky has fallen and the rivers have dried, where liberty has been abolished and Earth will never recover; and the other one, in which everything’s fine and people look at the alternate nation and say, “What the _____ is wrong with you??”

How did we get here? We’re co-existing in a fractured reality.

We may need to answer that question before we can address a more pertinent one:

How do we get back?

How do we return to that old school version of hating the president, as we all more or less live in the same United States?

We’re supposed to be “One Nation Under God.” As for God, that’s a whole debate in itself.

But how do we even make it to the “one nation” part?

I’d like to hear from you.

I’d like to know.

At this moment, I surely don’t.

-ALEX

See 3 more pieces from me:

America Needs A Christian Revival

September 11th: Remembering Not Only Tragedy, But Something Greater

Pat Sajak Crushes Conservative Blacklisting, Outrage Culture, And The Absurdity Of The ‘Look At Me’ Generation

Find all my RedState work here.

And please follow Alex Parker on Twitter and Facebook.

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