Is It Even Possible To Get Back To ‘E Pluribus Unum’?

I pen this after both the second assassination attempt on former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump and listening to a monologue by establishment Democrat Chris Cuomo. In listening to Cuomo’s words – and I by no means agree with his political philosophy as I do believe myriad statements by the elected Left fomented the targeting of Trump – I believe the meat of his intent is absolutely correct.

The division in the United States – and quite frankly, in the whole of the free world – is so extreme that it isn’t unreasonable to ask if societal cohesiveness can ever be achieved again. It’s always been a work in progress and always will be. But as it stands today, the ideological gulf that exists between opposing factions in our society is enormous, and, in my educated opinion, it is manufactured by the elite for the elite.

I have edited Mr. Cuomo’s remarks to highlight what I believe to be the poignant points of his monologue:

He is correct, as was Benjamin Franklin in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1751 and Aesop before him: United we stand. Divided, we fall. It is the bedrock of our national motto: E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One).

But while Cuomo essentially absolves the political far-Left for creating this divide and attempts to place equal blame on the political Right, I see more examples of incendiary rhetoric coming from the far-Left and opportunistic Left than I do from the Right. And I am not the only one. It was the catalyst for high-profile Democrats leaving the Democrat Party, Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Manchin, Joe Lieberman, and Kyrsten Sinema, to name but a few.

Opportunistically Machiavellian

The move to opportunistically divide our nation – and this comes after the US Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, and after a time when our nation was becoming colorblind – started with Barack and Michelle Obama who, by any critical standard, harbored a bias against traditional Americanism for their embrace of victimhood.

Each had questionable public statements that sewed the seeds of divide in our nation:

• Barack Obama: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” (2008 – stolen from the film The Untouchables)

• Michelle Obama: “Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices; we are going to have to change our conversation; we're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation.” (2008)

• Barack Obama: “You didn't build that.” (2012, referring to businesses)

• Michelle Obama: “When they go low, we go high.” (2016 Democratic National Convention)

• Michelle Obama: “Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice.” (2017)

• Barack Obama: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” (2008)

• Michelle Obama: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.” (2016)

• Barack Obama: “If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.” (2012, about Trayvon Martin's death)

• Michelle Obama: “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.” (2008)

While these statements may seem nuanced compared to today’s inflammatory rhetoric, they set the stage and opened the stage door for the more zealous politician, the more opportunistic politician. It groomed the path forward for unbridled hate to be marketed to the American people, many of whom are too fickle to understand its “divide and conquer” intent.

Here are just a few examples of how the rhetoric of the Left has morphed from simply divisive to the cusp of a call for all-out violence and the targeting of both those who hold opposite political beliefs and those running for office who hold opposing viewpoints. These examples target Donald Trump:

• Kamala Harris — repeatedly: “Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”

• Kamala Harris: “It’s on us to recognize the threat [Trump] poses.”

• Kamala Harris: “Does one of us have to come out alive? Ha ha ha ha!”

• Joe Biden: “It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

• Joe Biden: “I mean this from the bottom of my heart: Trump is a threat to this nation.”

• Joe Biden: “Trump is a genuine threat to this nation…He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for.”

• Joe Biden: “Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.”

• Joe Biden: “Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic…and that is a threat to this country.”

• Tim Walz: “Are [Republicans] a threat to democracy? Yes…Are they going to put peoples’ lives in danger? Yes.”

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi: “[Trump] is a threat to our democracy of the kind that we have not seen.”

• Rep. Jasmine Crockett: “MAGA in general — they are threats to us domestically.”

• Rep. Dan Goldman: “He is destructive to our democracy and…he has to be eliminated.”

• Rep. Steve Cohen: “Trump is an enemy of the United States.”

• Rep. Maxine Waters: “Are [Trump supporters] preparing a civil war against us?”

• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Trump is an “existential threat to our democracy.”

• Rep. Adam Schiff: Trump is the “gravest threat to our democracy.”

• Rep. Gregory Meeks: “Trump cannot be president again. He’s an existential threat to democracy.”

• Rep. Abigail Spanberger: “Trump is a threat to our democracy … the threats to our democratic republic are real.”

• Rep. Annie Kuster: “Trump and his extreme right-wing followers pose an existential threat to our democracy.”

• Rep. Becca Balint: “We cannot underestimate the threat [Trump] poses to American democracy.”

• Rep. Stacey Plaskett: Trump “needs to be shot.”

• Rep. Steven Horsford: “Trump Republicans are a dangerous threat to our state.”

• Rep. Gabe Vasquez: “Remove the national threat from office.”

• Rep. Mike Levin: “Donald Trump is a threat to our nation, our freedom, and our democracy.”

• Rep. Eric Sorensen: “He is the greatest threat to law and order we have in our country.”

• Rick Wilson, The Lincoln Project: “They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.”

• Former Harris-Biden staffer Kate Bedingfield: Democrats should “turn their fire on Donald Trump.”

• State Rep. Steven Woodrow (D-CO): “The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.”

And this is but a sampling of the rhetoric that targets the impressionable and the fickle. For Cuomo to equivocate this litany of targeted politically opportune hate with the protestations on the Right to the now-obvious attempt by Marxists to advance ideological revolution in the United States is laughable.

Even so, Cuomo’s core point is solid. We cannot repair our divided country – and the world cannot repair the ideologically divided free world – if we continue to fall for the disingenuous opportunism of the elite and political classes’ use of divide-and-conquer societal manipulation; the Machiavellianism as exampled above.

Machiavellianism More Accurately Recounted

This Machiavellianism – or, more accurately, the “divide and rule” strategy – is as old as conflict itself. While the divide and conquer strategy is often associated with Niccolò Machiavelli, the Italian Renaissance philosopher and writer, it is not a tactic that originated with him.

Machiavelli discussed the concept in his famous work, The Prince, but he was one of many to employ it or write about it. However, Machiavelli’s writings on the subject did bring the concept to prominence and solidify its place in political theory and strategy.

The divide and conquer strategy, also known as “divide and rule,” has its roots in ancient empires and kingdoms. Rulers employed the tactic to maintain control over their territories by breaking them into smaller, more manageable units and preventing them from uniting against the ruling power. 

One of the earliest recorded uses of this strategy was by the Persian Empire, in which the rulers appointed local satraps to govern different regions, ensuring their loyalty to the central power.

The Romans also used this strategy to maintain control over their vast empire. They pitted different tribes and groups against each other, thus preventing them from joining forces and challenging Roman authority.

The elite and elected classes of the United States and Europe employ this strategy against their citizens today to maintain control, weaken opposition, and consolidate power.

Defeating Those Who Divide & Conquer

The only way for the people to emerge victorious in our common battle against those who would manipulate us by dividing us by ideological and political demographics to control us is to realize that: a) we have more in common with each other than we do in difference, and b) that we are, in fact, being manipulated by the greed merchants of power and influence in the elitist and opportunistically political classes.

We must make a concerted effort to expose ourselves to the reality that these disingenuous actors are, in fact, targeting us for their own selfish reasons and using the mainstream and social media complexes to do their propagandistic bidding. We must all do everything in our power to place common sense at the core of our discernment on every issue and statement these malefactors offer us as “truth.”

To achieve this, we must all – all of us – start discussing politics and subjects deemed impolite by the “powers that be” with our families, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. We must engage in this endeavor calmly and with level heads, using provable facts and open ears and hearts that allow us to listen to opposing viewpoints without ideologically or politically based judgment.

At that juncture, we can begin to understand that we – We the People – have more in common than we do in difference. When we can achieve that realization, when we can once again embrace e pluribus unum, we will have the opportunity to diminish the power that the maleficent actors of the elitist and elected classes have over us, and that is the first step toward reuniting our country – and the free world. That is the first step toward taming the totalitarian brood that seeks to greedily control our nation and the world, regardless of our codified rights to sovereignty and freedom.