It’s dangerous for pro-Trumpers, or anybody else, to want to secede

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – The COVID-19 pandemic and the vociferous vaccine debate have set Americans at each other’s throats.

Other hot-button issues, from critical race theory to abortion to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, have turned up the flame.

And the fire is continuously stoked by Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms that rely on division to drive engagement and make profit.

It’s led more and more Americans to wonder whether the United States has ever been this divided.

Are you kidding?

We heard this “divided America” talk the day Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, way before any of us had heard about COVID-19.

But forget about Trump. What about America during the Vietnam War era? There were protests on college campuses. The National Guard killed protesting students at Kent State.

Serious divisions.

And what about what the country went through during the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s? There was widespread unrest. Marches on Washington, D.C. Riots. Cities in flames.

And go back to the Civil War, when America really was divided.

I’m sure there were other eras when Americans felt that the very fabric of the nation was bring rent asunder, that the country couldn’t survive.

But we got through it. America has endured. There have been a lot of bumps along the way, but we’re still standing 245 years after the Declaration of Independence, imperfect document though it might have been, was signed.

But today, the talk is growing louder that the Union cannot endure after all, that America should be broken up into different countries, with the blue states making up one nation, red states another.

A poll from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia showed that 52 percent of Trump voters support splitting the country up.

No surprise there. But the same survey showed that 41 percent of those who voted for Democratic President Joe Biden felt the same way.

Abraham Lincoln would chuckle. What’s happening today is worse than a house divided over slavery? Worse than “no taxation without representation”? Americans would forsake each other over a virus? Over some tweets?

Honest Abe would tell us to grow up already. And count our blessings.

Staten Islanders understand the separatist feeling. We’ve never fully felt a part of New York City. There were many times when we were ignored by City Hall. We were the city’s dump for half a century. Staten Islanders in the 1990s voted to secede from the other boroughs. The secession movement went nowhere.

But if we’d left, there would have never been a Mayor Rudolph Giuliani or a Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Both of whom were very good for Staten Island. Both mayors showed that Staten Islanders could wield real political power, at least sometimes. It’s a lesson that shouldn’t be lost on any of us.

Here’s something else to remember: Red states don’t always stay red. Neither do blue states.

Virginia voted for a Republican for president every time from 1972…