From Bill Formby at MadMikesAmerica:
Americans in general, and Republicans specifically, began showing their true colors immediately after 9/11/. America had been home of the brave, defenders of truth and living good lives as long as bad things were occurring elsewhere. We had stood firm against torture and mistreatment of people anywhere until then, but once it crossed the oceans and happened in our homeland everything changed.
Suddenly, torture was okay, mistreatment of people who were different from us was justified. We became as frightened as children in a terrible storm no longer the home of the brave. We became suspicious, uncertain, untrusting, and unwilling to accept anyone unlike ourselves. That was the start of divisions among our peoples into tribalism and distrust of our institutions. That allowed someone like Trump to capitalize on those uncertainties and further divide us.
Donald Trump has single-handedly brought this country closer to a second civil war, and we stood by and let him do it. No one with authority stood up and said, “Enough, this is not who we are.” Actually, there may have been a few but they were too few, too late.