If we pretend that the brand of hate peddled by Trump and the GOP is the same as the anger or frustration of the Democratic Party, then we deflect and distract from a serious problem that is deeply damaging America. Both parties are not the same.
It is not "fairness" to say they are. It plays into the hands of the racists and misogynists and anti-semites and anti-LGBTQ and anti-free speech, anti-press, nationalist, white supremacist mobs. Rudeness is not domestic terrorism.
Denying a public official her cheesecake is not the same as echoing the chants of the KKK or threatening to jail the political opposition. We need to clearly recognize the threat of demagogues who wind up crowds in arenas while undermining the rule of law & demonizing the other.
We need to acknowledge that Trump and Trumpism are a special threat, echo the KKK and the ethno-nationalist enemies we have faced and do face around the world, are a step down the road to authoritarianism. They are not the GOP of the past. They are abnormal.
We can't let the demagogues and their handmaidens and enablers to say "everyone does it" when they don't, because that makes their attacks on democracy and democratic values "acceptable", a natural response. They are not. This is an extraordinary threat.
We must have the courage to reject false equivalencies. We must have the strength to say, no, pretending we are equivalent is not the path to the civility. Civility will only come by understanding the difference between right & wrong, between real values...
& hatred wearing the stolen mantle of a once great party. We need to do this in our exchanges at the dinner table & in political discourse. But mostly we need to do it at the ballot box on Nov 6. Rejecting Trumpism is the one essential step back to a civil national discourse.
