A house undivided

In 2017, neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell told an interviewer that he wished for a president who, unlike Donald Trump, "would not give his daughter to a Jew." He then sneered: "I don't think you can feel about race like I do and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl. Okay?"

I shared those detestable words with a purpose: To convey what genuine bigotry sounds like. Calls to maintain national borders and assertions of American exceptionalism are not of a piece with Cantwell's repulsive notions.

In fact, they are not within philosophical miles of them.

Unity is Americans' greatest national strength. Not diversity, as some insist. Stressing differences rather than commonality encourages fracture. (Which is certain demagogues' ambition.)

In his 2017 inaugural address, Trump noted that Americans of different skin tones are united by patriotism: "No matter our color, we still bleed the same red, white, and blue!"

One faith of the multi-racial MAGA movement, possibly the largest political crusade America has witnessed, is that our country can best advance to strength and prosperity when we all stand together.

(Historical accounts remind it was Democrats who founded the Ku Klux Klan and enacted Jim Crow laws. Too, more Repulicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.)

Trump's aversion to racial prejudice is emblamatic of moral rectitude. American stability and progress depend on such leadership.

But leveraging racial bigotry for electoral fortune, as Democrats still  do, divides Americans and allows animation to true hatred of the ugly type enunciated by the cretinous Cantwell.