‘Stop demonizing each other,’; With a new president, and a country deeply split, can we heal?

NEW HAVEN — It’s a new year, with a new president and a new Congress, but the United States of America is far from united, as President Joseph R. Biden Jr. noted in his inaugural address.

Nearly three weeks after a massive crowd of Trump supporters marched on the U.S. Capitol — with a mob later storming the building — the nation remains deeply split, with question about how and whether it can heal, leaders and experts say.

It’s been brewing for years.

It didn’t begin Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol breach, or Jan. 5, when Democrats won the two Georgia Senate seats by a razor-thin margin to take control of both congressional chambers.

Or Nov. 3, when Biden defeated then-President Donald J. Trump by a similar thin margin — with Trump and millions of supporters contesting the results — or May 25, when a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on the neck of George Floyd, a black man who died while being restrained, touched off months of Black Lives Matter demonstrations nationwide.

Biden, after taking the oath of office Wednesday on the well-guarded steps of the Capitol in front of a sea of American flags where spectators normally would be — in a locked-down Washington, D.C., inhabited by 25,000 National Guard troops — set healing the nation as a top priority.

“From now, on this hallowed ground, where just a few days ago violence sought to shake the Capitol’s very foundation, we come together as one nation, under God, indivisible to carry out the peaceful transfer of power, as we have for more than two centuries,” Biden said.

Overcoming daunting challenges “to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words,” Biden said. “It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity.”

Biden noted foes the nation faces: “anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness.

But unity won’t be easy, according to members of Congress who were in the Capitol as glass broke during the insurrection, and state and local officials and regular citizens of various political persuasions.

“An opening”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, both were inside the Capitol when the rioters showed up. Blumenthal said effective leadership is needed to help move the nation forward.

“Unity is achievable, not inevitable. We need to work for it,” Blumenthal said. “The door is open to my Republican colleagues. There’s no charge for admission — and there’s a real urgency and we should all feel it. Because it’s a matter of life of death,” he said.

“What will bring us together is essentially strong and effective leadership, most importantly involving action to conquer the pandemic and cure the economy,” Blumenthal said.

“We’re going to need leadership,” Blumenthal said. “… I think leadership can bring us together, but it has to be on both sides of the aisle. … We are divided as never before, but we have a potential for unity as never before.”

But State Senate Majority Leader Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said a will to heal also is needed.

“First of all, to heal, you have to have people of goodwill who want to heal on both sides,” Looney said.

“I don’t expect it” to happen, Looney said. “I hope for it. But I don’t expect it.

“I think the one chance we have — or at least the best chance I hope we have, is the fact that President Trump is gone, and hopefully President Biden wants to reach out to people who may disagree politically but share Democratic principals,” Looney said. “I think the problem with Trump is that he never really believed in those shared Democratic principles.”

But “with (Trump) not on the scene, or at least not in office, I think that’s an opening for some sort of healing,” Looney said.

“Take the temperature down”

Quinnipiac University political science professor Scott McLean said there is historical precedent that points the way toward how a society goes about healing its divisions.

“Our political science and history knowledge tells us that in deeply divided democratic societies, the right way to heal is to start by telling the truth … and then starting to” reconcile and heal, McLean said.

State House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said there are things elected officials can do to to set the tone.

“I think that public officials need to stop weaponizing the public with their words,” Candelora said.

“Public officials focusing on politics, when at some point elections need to end and we need to focus on policy,” are part of the problem, he said. “We certainly can blame Trump, but I don’t think it’s a party issue. I think it’s a policy issue. … Generally, we have to take the temperature down,” he said.

“I think, as a public issue, I would own it and not use it to point fingers,” Candelora said. “I frankly was kind of disappointed in (Trump’s) speech after the attack on the Capitol. That would have been a good opportunity to begin the healing.”

But the deep-seated rancor displayed in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach didn’t begin there, or even with the election of Trump, he said.

“I think it’s broader,” Candelora said. “In my opinion, I’ve seen it develop over the last decade. … I think social media has played a big part.” Trump “was probably the face of it and will probably be the face of it for a while, but I don’t think he was the start of it.”

Hamden Legislative Council member Justin Farmer, D-5, who marched in several Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, said the 2020 presidential election was “an election for the soul of our nation,” but calls for unity are not enough.

“A couple of days ago we celebrated the life and legacy of Dr. King, who didn’t believe in a passive peace,” Farmer said. “There are calls to us to unify and get back together … but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of tension.”

The fact remains that “half the country voted for somebody who was divisive and supported white nationalism” and “that really inflamed” the situation, Farmer said. “I think the way we get through it … part of it is to push people to have those really uncomfortable conversions and part of it is organizing.”

“If we really want to get people together, we can’t tiptoe around the really big issues,” Farmer said. “We have to address climate change … inequality… homelessness.”

Any effort at healing “can’t just be ‘kumbaya, come together,’” but needs to be backed with action to bring about change, he said.

Trump supporter Todd Petrowski, a registered Republican who organized the Boaters for Trump and Blue Lives Matter Boat Parade from Branford to New Haven last fall, — and who was disgusted by the violence he saw at the Capitol Jan. 6 — also wants to see change.

“I think the first move” toward national healing “would be for violence, across the board, on both sides, to stop,” said Petrowski. “Violence isn’t going to change anything. … If you want unity, stop the violence,” and “if you’re gonna condemn one, condemn it all and let’s be fair.

“Imagine if we all worked together, how powerful a nation we would be,” he said. “Now, it’s almost like two nations. There’s almost no compromise at all.”

The pandemic

Blumenthal said that Biden “understands how people are hurting … and so he is focused on very specific dollar action — $1,400 stimulus payments, continued major unemployment payments, small business aid” that are all designed to put America back to work.

Trump “was absolutely absent” in efforts to respond to the coronavirus and help people who are facing fiscal pain as a result of it, Blumenthal said. In fact, “he was not only absent; he was an obstacle, and in the end he almost scuttled the whole thing.”

He acknowledged that “there’s also a large group of people who wish Donald Trump was president. … We’re going to have to reach out to every Trump voter with a message that a path forward is tied to conquering the pandemic and improving the economy,” he said. “At some point they will realize that Joe Biden is president” and we need to move forward, he said.

Right now, “We’re suffering 3,000-4,000 deaths every day. We’re in the darkest of the dark days of this pandemic,” Blumenthal said. “There was a lot of vitriol directed at FDR when he took office, but eventually, Americans rallied together … and I think ultimately, Americans will realize that we have a lot more in common than we have dividing us.”

To clear the way for unity, we need to “administer more vaccines, do more testing and provide more infrastructure,” he said.

“Words matter”

DeLauro, the new chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, doesn’t think that lowering the temperature is enough to bring the citizenry together. She said “there’s a lot of pain emanating from the past, from last week and the week before, a lot of pain that was instigated by the (former) president.

“There is going to be an impeachment trial” and “in terms of the security issues, I am overseeing a part of that investigation. None of that can be short-circuited. You have to have accountability and you have to have responsibility.”

“I think people do need to understand how and why” things happened, “and then we can move on together,” she said.

She said she was encouraged by Biden because “I think when you have someone who’s interested in uniting the country … people do listen to a leader. Words matter.”

Trump supporter Jeff Christman, a 49-year-old West Haven house painter who said he is a registered Republican and leans libertarian, was one of the people who attended the Jan. 6 rally and march in D.C. He said he was far back in the pack, not one of the people on the Capitol steps or inside building.

He firmly believes the Nov. 3 election was stolen.

From where Christman stood that day, the massive rally “was not as crazy as the media made it out to be. Now I’m not saying that it wasn’t crazy in the Capitol … and I’m not trying to minimize anything,” but to him, “the overall mood of the place was peaceful, celebratory.

“Ever been to a Grateful Dead show?” he asked. “Well, it was kind of like that.”

But he could see when things began to turn ugly up front, and finally knew “it was time to get out.”

“You could see that there was just this constant storming of that front door and you could see that the Capitol police, they were massing up at the top, and they were getting ready to do something,” he said.

“I think the Democratic Party needs to take a step back … Let’s take a step back … and call for unity and healing,” he said.

Christman said. “I think that people have to stop demonizing each other…”

“Something different”

Hamden Legislative Council member Brad McDowell, D-At Large, also a BLM supporter, said he doesn’t know the extent to which healing is possible, but “I think we have an obligation to try.”

But in his mind, “I don’t know if we can come together,” he said. “We don’t even have the same American values. … If someone’s response to losing an election is an attempt to overthrow their own government … I don’t know if it’s possible.”

In order to heal, “I think that we have to do something different,” he said. “We can’t possibility continue along the path that we’ve been.”

Healing, for him, doesn’t mean simply going back to a more genteel time before Trump was elected, McDowell said, “because ‘all men are created equal’ didn’t include all men — and it certainly didn’t include women.”

Christman said he thinks “there’s a multifaceted approach that needs to take place.”

“I think people need to realize that there’s a left and there’s a right and then there’s the establishment, and the establishment is doing everything it can to agitate people” in order to hold on to power, he said.

“I think the way to heal is to understand that people are able to have a difference of opinion — and just because they have a difference of opinion, that doesn’t make them your enemy,” he said.

In the United States, “we have liberties that no other nation on the face of the Earth has. … I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and I think there needs to be some education about how wonderful it is to live in this nation we’re in, and I think people need to stop demonizing it.”

Christman’s brother, Mark Christman of East Haven, who also is a Trump supporter, said, “I think we do need to find a way to heal it. I think we need to find some people who are big enough just to put it behind us and just find some common ground.

“You know what I would like to see Biden do? I’d like to see Biden pardon Trump,” Mark Christman said. “I think if he did something to make some sort of statement to reach out to the 70-odd-million people who voted for Trump,” it might make a difference, he said.