By Carole McWilliams

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." - Abraham Lincoln

I've anguished over that for a long time, given the toxic divisions in our politics, which unfortunately reflects toxic divisions among our citizens. I wish all Americans had a mind-set of "We're all in this together" instead of Us versus Them or my country versus your country.

Compromise for the general good has become selling out.

Far too many politicians seem to give their first loyalty to their political party rather than to their country. And of course this year, one of our candidate's first loyalty seems to be to Himself and his ego, not political party or country.

Last week Himself was up in the middle of the night trash tweeting about a former Miss Universe about her weight, after she happened to be mentioned by Hillary Clinton in the Sept. 26 presidential candidate debate. The middle of the night? Seriously? Himself didn't do so well trash talking Clinton face to face, so he had to take it out on this third party.

How is this sort of juvenile, petty, vindictive, and generally unhinged behavior supposed to "make our country great again"?

In mid-September, Himself proclaimed that when he's installed as ruler, the U.S. will be ONE country with ONE flag (which one?), ONE religion (whose?), and ONE god (whose?).

How will Himself's Oneness be enforced? It kind of smacks of dictatorship.

Will the First Amendment will be one of the first things to be eliminated in the new regime? He Himself has egged on his followers to rough up protesters at Himself's rallies (for practicing free speech that Himself doesn't like) and (in the very vague way that is his genius) suggested committing violence against Clinton.

Those issues warrant more attention, but they've now been superceded by Himself's business genius at losing $916 million in 1995, as reported by the New York Times, thus possibly and legally paying no federal income taxes for many years.

National Public Radio has had several reports on what seems to be the core of Himself's business genius - borrowing huge sums of money for his extravagant real estate developments and hiring contractors to work on them, and then stiffing them (and casino employees) by declaring bankruptcy, or by giving creditors a choice to settle for far less than originally agreed or be paid nothing. He profits, others pay.

He's suggested the full faith and credit of the United States could be negotiated down the same way, as another way to "make America great again."

Hopefully some audience members will ask Himself about all these items at the next town hall style presidential candidate debate on Sunday.