Remember how after 9/11 "the whole country" was "united" around Bush?
Just ask Bill Maher or Susan Sontag (oh wait, she’s no longer with us). Or Democrats who were running for re-election in 2002, or John Kerry in 2004. Or Phil Donahue or The Chicks (formerly known as The Dixie Chicks).
And lest we forget, many hundreds if not thousands of Muslim men in the US were rounded up and unlawfully detained in the days and weeks after 9/11. Some were tortured while in detention. Many immigrants were deported. Families were torn apart, and people lived in fear. Guilt by the most tenuous of association, to put it mildly.
Hate crimes against Muslims and people who “looked” Muslim (notably Sikhs) escalated after 9/11. The Bush administration itself was directing law enforcement to infiltrate mosques and aggressively question Muslim families. John Ashcroft created what amounted to a Muslim registry long before Trump threatened to in the 2016 campaign.
Muslim children were told by their classmates that they or their parents were responsible for 9/11 and should “go back to where they came from.” Many teachers and parents tolerated and even encouraged this abuse.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Barbara Lee got tons of hate and death threats for daring to vote no on the blank check given to Bush by Congress to fight a permanent war on “terror.”
All of this was facilitated by the mainstream media, and mainstream politicians. The “uniting” was a uniting in fear of the Muslim “Other” and revanchist, aggressive, violent jingoism.
“But America is so POLARIZED these days! Can’t we unite around BIPARTISANSHIP?”
No offense, but the last time there was across the board bipartisanship in American politics, the US launched an unprovoked and illegal war of aggression and an open-ended “war on terror” (which in practice was a war on Muslims, and others who were deemed “Other”, foreign, and ”un-American”). The last time there was strong bipartisanship, the US government was torturing human beings in black sites without charge. The last time there was strong bipartisanship, Dick Cheney was at the height of his power. The last time there was strong bipartisanship, the road to President Donald Trump, Charlottesville, QAnon, and January 6 was being aggressively paved.
Take one look at those people in that other party and tell me again that Democrats need to be more timid, more respectful, more polite, more BIPARTISAN. Please.
I’m sorry, but I can’t and won’t unite with people who want people like me, a left-liberal and Democrat, literally dead. I just can’t. I’m not forgiving enough for that.
Hey all, think Lincoln should’ve been more conciliatory and “bipartisan” with the Southern secessionists? Why was mean old Abe not willing to “compromise” with the Confederates? 
/rant
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