America is not a brand! That's why we have these problems, party branding and sports-team mentalities are bad and stupid, and they need to be called out as such on both sides over and over again.
What we're seeing is more and more people who have been historically disenfranchised and systematically blocked from resources pushing for something better. The people who have been stewards of this legacy of oppression are building something like a wall, a firewall, of cultural angst that is most easily triggered by drawing lines around race, national origin, religion, etc.
Their desperation and resorting to "pure uncut racism" is the inevitable response to what must happen. The answer isn't to roll it back, its to keep it going and engage with it head-on and it make even more complicated. When things are too complicated, you don't form two sides of civil war. Letting them simplify it by branding it and waving colored flags is the darkest path.
