Bitterness In Divided America
faulting Republicans for their “blind rage” in the Supreme Court battle. He said, “It threatens the basic faith the American people have in our institutions.”
Joanne B. Freeman, a professor of American history at Yale University, said that since the nation’s founding there had only been “a handful of other times that have been this ugly,” including the run-up to the Civil War.
“There are moments in American history where we get such extreme polarization that the government no longer functions the way it’s supposed to function,” Professor Freeman said, offering a grim diagnosis of the present: “It’s a virtually systemic abandonment of norms, to a degree that I find alarming.”
Mr. Trump became president by mastering the existing divisions at the heart of the country’s culture, exploiting fissures around identity, ethnicity, sex, religion and class to forge a ferociously loyal coalition that represents a minority of the country but votes with disproportionate power.
But those divisions have only grown since 2016, and Mr. Trump has continued to aggravate them, from his equivocal response to a white-supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, to his mockery of the #MeToo movement and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says Judge Kavanaugh attempted to rape her as a teenager.
At a rally in Mississippi, the president flouted the pretense that support for the judge could coexist with concern for victims of sexual assault. Mr. Trump went far beyond questioning Dr. Blasey’s account or defending Judge Kavanaugh, instead ridiculing her and stoking the resentments between genders. He warned voters that lying women could come forward to falsely accuse their loved ones of sexual misconduct: “Think of your son,” he urged them. “Think of your husband.”
Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a conservative who supports Judge Kavanaugh, gave an emotional speech on the Senate floor addressing the #MeToo movement and acknowledging: “We all know that the president cannot lead us through this time.”
And it was in ominous terms that Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, explained her decision to oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination. “I believe we’re dealing with issues right now that are bigger than the nominee and how we ensure fairness and how our legislative and judicial branch can continue to be respected,” Ms. Murkowski said. “We’re at a place where we need to begin thinking about the credibility and integrity of our institutions.”
The one thing most voters seem to agree on is that the political process has become intolerable. “The divisiveness now is the worst,” said Reeny Sovel, a jeweler in Fenton, Michigan, who is a Democrat.
Brandon Peabody, a Republican businessman in the same area, said politics was “tough to handle right now,” even with his party on top.
But there is little obvious appetite for rebuilding some semblance of bipartisanship in Washington. There remains, chiefly among moderate elites and independent voters, a melancholy hope that somehow a new era of conciliation might take hold in government, perhaps once Mr. Trump is no longer president.
For her part, as she announced her support for Judge Kavanaugh, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, lamented the country’s “great disunity” and an impulse among different Americans of “extreme ill will toward those who disagree with them.”
Ms. Collins said, “One can only hope that the Kavanaugh nomination is where the process has finally hit rock bottom.”