'Patriots' dividing the country

“We are America. Those people are not.”

Those words, spoken at the 1992 Republican National Convention by its chairman Rich Bond, exemplify the problem we have in this country — the unwillingness on the part of one side of the political aisle to grant legitimacy to a view that it doesn’t share.

Of late that’s led to the fight over silent protests by National Football League players during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner”; and, more recently, reaction to Sunday’s massacre in Las Vegas, most notably toward those who favor more gun control as being, shall we say, “un-American.”

To me, however, they speak of a form of bullying, in this case by exclusion. It doesn’t matter if you were born here or have adopted citizenship — if you don’t believe in our principles you’re not really an American.

I suggest that it’s bullying because of the focus on power, specifically the military and the sale of guns.

Concerning the protests against racism in general and police brutality in particular that caused now-former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick to drop to one knee during the playing of the national anthem last year, he himself said that it was never a slam against the military — indeed, his stance was actually recommended by a Green Beret — but that hasn’t stopped the naysayers from attacking him. Two weeks ago President Trump referred to protesters as S.O.B.’s, which caused even more players and even some owners to take a knee. (The owners, some of whom donated to Trump’s presidential campaign, recognized that the players, over two-thirds of whom are African-American, are the product.)

And last weekend’s carnage in Las Vegas has put the issue of gun control front-and-center again. The “patriots” are saying, of course, that the focus should be on the mental state of the shooter[s], not that he had weaponry. (Never mind what he actually had; you’d really have to stretch the Second Amendment to suggest that he had the right to a machine gun.)

It seems to me that the dissent that we say is part and parcel of American political culture doesn’t always apply. In any nation, let alone America, politics should lead to compromise for the greater good. But when there seems to be only one way of “approved” thinking it leads to the kind of divisiveness we say we don’t want. Because not everyone is going to fall in line, and if we want a truly united country dissent must be understood, addressed and honored.