In case you were wondering how the press is helping to unify this country…they aren’t.

For a great many Americans yesterday, it was a time to salve many of the open wounds created over the past couple of months. It is a time for many to remember and reconsider what built us into this powerhouse of a nation, and what injuries may have been experienced over the past weeks could possibly be remedied with a remembrance of what we are as a nation and lead to healing.

Well, Bloomberg Opinion is here to rip off those bandages and reopen those wounds.

In a brazenly bitter post by Francis Wilkinson (sparing you the indignity of clicking on it by being provided at length in this Twitter thread) he takes a look at the Declaration of Independence and decides that most Americans are stunted jingoists, all because they choose to focus only on an uplifting passage at the start and not on the contemptuous language inspiring that prose. See, Francis is uniquely skilled to see what is truly in this document, and he is here to set us straight. 

After setting things up to hint the recent discord in the nation can be allayed by looking over the noble words in The Declaration, he attempts to pull the rug out from under Americans. (keyword: ‘’attempts’’.)

Provided you don’t pay too close attention to the holiday’s bill of particulars. Over the course of more than two centuries, America has buried most of the Declaration of Independence beneath a dense canopy of aspiration.

Francis then works to set us all straight. He goes on to describe how the bulk of the Declaration of Independence is ”a sour litany of complaint’’, I guess bemused to learn that the desire for a group of leaders to rise up in revolt to a parent nation was inspired by a length of abuses. Maybe he imagined the colonists could have been living a fantastical life of flush economies and sprawling goodwill…leading them into a violent blood-soaked divorce.

After mocking President Trump and hailing the contemporary protestors Wilkinson goes to work on denigrating the founders, focusing on Thomas Jefferson. ”The Declaration’s main author, whose able mind was free to roam while his slaves took care of business,” says Francis, clearly siding with today’s ignorance-on-display protest groups, ”grew so spiteful of Britain that he soon abandoned his very English taste for Madeira and Port, proving a true patriot could survive on fine Bordeaux.’’ This is a leftist op-ed writer at Bloomberg, attempting to insult one of this country’s most prolific founders.

Francis furthers his insults on the aggrieved politicians of that century, saying, ”It never ceases to amaze that such fortune-favored hands were so tightly clenched.’’ It really sounds as if he is resentful about these leaders who struck a blow in the name of liberty to build this into the nation we are today. Just who did these rich wine-swillers think they were?! He then goes on to be stupefied at the reality that not long after our independence we, as a nation, celebrated that independence. 

”In 1826, there was an outpouring of self-congratulation but very little in the way of outrage.”

Francis implies that a country that had successfully broken free need not be celebratory but instead to continually dwell on the outrages from prior. He sounds like someone who breaks up a relationship and years later still complains about their ex. 

Then, in predictable fashion, he tries to claim that the vision of the founders to say human value is self-evident is NOT in fact evident in our contemporary nation. Seriously. He wants to insist that the plight of our modern society — which has dispatched slavery, Jim Crow, voting blockages, and numerous other segregations — has not improved since the days of our founding. Then Wilkinson does something remarkable; he completely contradicts his entire premise in his closing paragraph.

The vision and the spur is also what distinguishes protests against injustice from rancid complaints from the White House. The former seek to realize the self-evident truth. The latter are solipsism. Only one grievance is anchored in the higher calling that, for many Americans, is all we remember of the Declaration.

So, here is what Wilkinson has done in his dizzying paradox. After spending the entire piece mocking those of us who follow that opening segment too ardently (written by rich racists mind you), he goes on to praise the modern protests because…their calling is rooted in that very same passage he insults anyone else for remembering. Great work, Francis! You could not have invalidated yourself any better.

This is about the level of pragmatism we have come to expect from our contemporary media complex. They do not have to make sense, they just have to create division. On the day when this country had very easy means to work on unity, Bloomberg is here to ensure that all the divisions will remain in place.