Love them or hate them, guns, politics, inflation, national identity, and the congressional hearings into the events of January 6 all focus attention on a single decisive person – no, not an elected person – I mean the voter – the voter who has been pulled into very divisive directions – the voter who is tasked with selecting elected representatives and leaders for all levels of our government.
Through the Obama, Trump, and now Biden years, voters have hung their heads and shrugged that nothing can be done to address our divided nation – nothing seems to change – nothing seems to fuel the dying light at the end of the national tunnel – our nation is so very divided – codified into positions that even conflict with our proclaimed values, for the sake of aligning sound bites and memes into political positions – we are two tribes, for no other reason than we’ve been made to believe that we must be divided – and yet, we all refuse to budge, because we (sadly) think we believe in this divide.
In our heads, our divide passes as individual shrewdness, or even intelligence – this divide covers as an excuse, that if we believe nothing can be done, then no one must take responsibility, or be blamed – because, if nothing can be done, then we’re all off the hook, and we can shamelessly feed and perpetuate the divide.
Truth be told, national divide is always wrong – the important thing to remember about national divide is that it erodes our national strength – regardless of congressional majority, the nation loses if we’re not able to allow governance to be applied to the collective “us” – there is no such thing as “liberty and justice for all” if we’re all going to demand that everyone must think and believe in only one version of America – we just keep going further down this path, and finding ourselves more divided, and blaming each other for the divide – this is NOT, NOT, NOT what this country was founded on.
But, what if the country could be saved – not because of our greatness – but, because enough people summoned the courage to do the right thing – to see the greater good of the nation – to desire unity more than individual positions – knowing sometimes the right thing is terrifying and unpopular – sometimes, the people doing the right thing is the result of being fed up with long spells of doing the wrong things – we’ve learned that it’s wrong for only one version of America to matter – the lesson is, that every legal version of America matters, and should be given a voice – how have we become a nation that turns a blind eye, and a deaf ear to those being wronged, and proclaim this indifference to be better for America? It’s shocking.
Many Americans on both sides of the divide, sit back and hope all this upheaval will fade into history and we’ll somehow be better for it – I believe we’ve got it wrong, because time is not a true healer – time only hides the divide, and allows it to resurface uglier and angrier somewhere down the road – many will say we’ve already seen the worst of our divide – but, I believe the worse is yet to come.
Our divide continues to define us – the world no longer sees us as leaders – they now know the full divided truth about us – we let our politics, guns, inflation, religion, national identity, and the January 6 committee grossly divide us instead of learning and growing as a nation – these are not things we should just shrug off.
So here’s where we, the voter come back into the story – we’re failing at our greatest opportunities to learn and grow, because we are letting these opportunities divide us – Americans, have failed to take heed and safeguard against ourselves and our government, because we believe the delusion that the Constitution has some self-correcting apparatus to stabilize the nation without intervention from the people – the people are that apparatus to ensure that national divide does not ruin this great nation – whether we make good choices or bad ones, or we’re people who are active or passive – we must never let ourselves become divided – the people are the tools, the process, the power, and the responsibility – people like you and I.
So when you hear somebody saying something you disagree with, consider the nation and not just yourself – today, tomorrow, or at any time during these challenging days, if we find that we continue to accomplish nothing important, keep in mind: That will only be true if you let it be true.
Brave and patriotic people can stand up and stop national divide at any time – brave and patriotic people can step up to hold each other, our government, and this nation accountable – be one of those people.
Kevin's Thoughts 