Morning Thanks--What won the day

Let's just think of what's happening all around us on a line graph. If we were to create an arc that somehow documents or illustrates the stress level of the American voting public since Donald Trump's surprising victory, the line would be almost consistently rising. Makes no difference if you're right or left, black or white, old or young, Republican or Democrat or Independent. The sides that exist today in this country and this culture are so are Grand Canyon-ed, it's scary.

There have always been conservatives and liberals, always been those who believe government is good and those who consider it malicious, but the distance between those basic views has only rarely felt so unbridgeable. We've become the Hatfields and the McCoys.

After yesterday's news conference, nothing's changed, even though for the first time since the Civil War a President of these United States made clear that to him some kind of moral equivalency exists between the actions of men and women who marched in torchlight, chanting Nazi slogans and racist chants, and those who came to protest against those beliefs. He called the people chanting "Jews will not replace us," good people, at least some of them. 

Some of us choose to differ. Some claim that "good people" would not have walked beneath a flag with a swastika or a flag of the Confederacy,  wouldn't have chanted things they did.

I don't know that we can recover from views Trump had suggested previously but now simply came right out and said yesterday at a news conference his handlers obviously wished over long before he walked off.  I don't know that many Republicans can sit still for them either.

This President seeks favor from only the 35% of the American public who will back him even if he guns down his enemies in the street. His malicious retorts yesterday to the CEOs who resigned from his council, as well as the totally unnecessary shot he took at Sen. John McCain were unseemly but characteristic, what keeps him popular with his base.

The temperature all around us is rising dangerously. No one knows where this will go. Don't figure on peace any time soon.

But pardon me for taking particular joy in one small bit of news in the storm, a new world record Trump will covet like none other. Last night, a few startling sentences became the most beloved tweet in Twitter history--liked somewhere close to three million times. Here it is, in its entirety.

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion … People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love … For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

In case you missed it, those words belong to Nelson Mandela, the South African patriot who spent years in prison for fighting apartheid, then emerged with forgiveness in his heart to become both a national hero and President.

The man who tweeted those words is Barack Obama.

There's reason for morning thanks when the sentiment of those words becomes the most loved tweet of all time. At least on Twitter, what won the day is love. 

If you can't agree with that, there's nothing ahead but darkness.