If you want to know why the country is divided, you need look no further than an article this week by Fox News' Sean Hannity. He claims he wants everyone to come together and give President-elect Donald Trump a chance, yet he can't help but lambast the very same people for the recent rash of protests popping up around the country. Like many conservatives, Hannity attempts to delegitimize the dissent by suggesting they are being organized by "professional protesters" as though there are no authentic reasons to oppose Trump. But the bigger and far more damaging issue here is that Hannity and other conservatives are labeling the people participating in these demonstrations as "crybabies".
The problem with such righteous indignation and deriding some liberal's response to the election is the ignorance and hypocrisy it represents.
If you take a look back at how conservatives conducted themselves over the past eight years, it makes you wonder where does someone like Sean Hannity get off calling anyone else a crybaby.
Hannity himself once said of President Obama - "he's not my president". The same phrasing that conservatives are now chastising as un-American. Of course this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to duplicity of conservative rhetoric.
For example, have conservatives forgotten the Tea Party protests that most conservative media outlets supported?
Have they suppressed the memory of the people shouting down elected officials and getting in fist fights at town hall meetings?
Have they contracted amnesia regarding the number of times Republican legislators symbolically voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act?
Are they oblivious to the rapid increase in hate groups and militias not seen since Bill Clinton was in office?
Are they ignoring the massive jump in gun sales after each of the two previous elections over irrational fears that guns would soon be outlawed?
Have they blocked out their rallys supporting those who spoke out for denying same sex couples their rights guaranteed under the constitution?
Don't they recall the rolling coal movement where conservatives removed the emissions controls from their vehicles in protest of government restrictions aimed at lowering CO2 emissions?
Have their efforts to add restrictions to voters, who just happen to mainly vote for Democrats, slipped their minds?
Don't they remember the daily and sometimes violent protesting outside of abortion clinics despite the issue being settled by the Supreme Court over four decades ago?
And have they no recollection of the birther movement where a majority of Republicans supported the idea that President Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and therefore was not qualified to be president?
So while Sean Hannity and others suggest that protesting after the election isn't how adults act, you'll have to forgive liberals if they have trouble accepting such criticism from a group of people who have spent the past eight years acting like a bunch of children who didn't get their way.
The people flipping cars and damaging stores in protest don't represent the vast majority of the 68 million people that didn't vote for Trump. For most non-Trump voters, protester or not, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose his policies. Dismissing these because your guy won the Electoral College certainly doesn't represent the best of a democracy.
While Hannity and other conservatives think liberals should be embarrassed by the protesters, the people who should really be embarrassed here are those that are suddenly offended by vocal opposition to the government after nearly a decade of doing the exact same thing. If you want to bring the country together, admit that your side was no better than the Americans you are now calling crybabies; because, if you want to act like the adult in the conversation you're going to have to take a little personal responsibility for your own immature actions.
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