Nigel Hastilow looks into the great divide of the DisUnited States

Race riots, white terrorism, prejudiced policemen and a President seems to be running an entirely dysfunctional White House are all part of the same disunited state of the place.

Donald Trump’s initial response to the killing of 32-year-old Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, was to condemn ‘hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides.’

He failed to condemn the white supremacists, racists and neo-Nazis whose protest led to riots and, ultimately, to a Dodge Challenger car being deliberately driven into a crowd of anti-fascist demonstrators killing Ms Heyer and injuring 19 others.

It was only two days later – after almost universal condemnation of his ambivalent response to the tragedy – that he succumbed to pressure.

‘Racism is evil,’ he eventually forced himself to declare, ‘And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.’

This came too late. Foreign leaders including Theresa May and Germany’s Angela Merkel had already condemned white racists and Mr Trump’s own Republican Party leaders were aghast at his original comments.

Unfortunately Mr Trump relied on extremist groups to help him into the White House in the first place so he didn’t want to upset his friends on the American right.

And when he failed to condemn them outright from the outset, several of these groups expressed their gratitude.

This incident is one in a long line of clashes in the United States where, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, white and black people do not always live happily side by side.

And it all goes back to the days when the United States tore itself apart over President Lincoln’s decision to abolish slavery.

The civil war may have ended after four blood-soaked years of fighting in 1865 but to many people, especially in the deep south, it has never been forgotten or forgiven.

The Confederate flag of the rebel Southern states, which fought to maintain a way of life built on slavery, is still a symbol venerated by some and provocative to others.

The protest and counter-protest in Charlottesville were provoked by a plan to get rid of a statue to General Robert E Lee (whose family, incidentally, came from Shropshire).

The General commanded the Confederate army and is seen by many, therefore, as a symbol of racism and intolerance.

The statue wasn’t even put up until 1924 which lends some support to the claim it was commissioned to make it clear who was in charge.

Now, like one of those statues of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, General Lee’s effigy has been toppled – a small victory for the anti-racists.

It doesn’t solve the deep divisions in America, however.

When I was in Richmond, the capital of Virginia, a couple of years ago, I was struck by what a run-down country America is – the roads are crumbling and the bridges falling down – and even more by its massive inequalities.

We may complain about the gap between rich and poor in Britain but in America everything is bigger. There is virtually no welfare state so they have far more beggars on the streets. They have huge mansions with manicured lawns and expensive cars a mile or two away from shanty-towns.

They have religion, of course, with bizarre churches on every corner which somehow perpetuate the myth that Americans are God-fearing folk.

Yet homeless people have to live out in the woods scratching a living as best they can. Teachers demand the right to carry a gun into class to protect themselves while people carry knives to work for the same reason.

Then there’s the – to a Brit brought up on the NHS – baffling hatred of universal health care on the grounds that taxes are already too high and if the poor can’t look after themselves then so much the worse for them.

The land of plenty is also the land of poverty. And when the poverty affects the white ‘trailer trash’ classes and rednecks who queued up to back Mr Trump, they cast around for someone to blame.

The simplistic answers trotted out by Mr Trump – blaming Mexicans, the Chinese, foreign businesses – support to the idea that, to ‘make America great again’ requires a re-assertion of white rights.

The President is not directly responsible for riot, injury or death. The disunited states have always been prone to flare-ups of bitterness.

The real problem is that the economy is apparently not capable of delivering the ‘American dream’ which politicians on both sides invoke at every opportunity.

The world’s policeman cannot even police itself. The most powerful nation on earth is powerless to deal with its own difficulties. As it was in the time of President Lincoln and General Lee, America is at war with itself.