  I've been thinking a lot in the past few days about a situation we seem to have in our country... It does concern me that our nation has fragmented, shattered like Humpty Dumpty and who can put us back together again? I suppose it being an election year it makes me think of this even more because modern politics, from my present vantage point anyway, seems to be less about bringing people together and more about dividing us into teams as if it were some huge political Superbowl... a game.
It's an Us versus Them mentality that ultimately robs the country. It robs the world of a united American voice and it steals from ourselves the possibility of effecting real change here in our nation. It's a well-known strategy in war that a divided enemy is as good as conquered. We certainly are a divided nation, divided and subdivided and splintered into so many "teams" that we seem to have forgotten that change comes via a unified voice.
I once passed a church that had a sign out from that said "THE SECOND CIVIL WAR : THE FIGHT FOR MORALS IN AMERICA" and I understood their viewpoint, religious fundamentalists do tend to see things in black and white and their theology is laced with the terminology of war, conquest and kingdom. But really... was that sign too far off? In many ways I think it is not. We are bickering internally with our neighbors, seeing them as a political or social label rather than as a fellow countryman who has to pay the same gasoline cost, the same grocery bill and has to somehow put it together in his or her mind as to how to cope with it all.
We are all just trying to find answers, folks... that's all. A quick listen to talk radio is all it takes to see this polarization, this dividing into factions.. this labelling. I am writing this to remind myself that no one is fully contained by a label. Labelling is lazy thinking and allows me to not see you as a person but as a series of preconceptions.... a word pretty damned close to the word prejudice, isn't it? Hmmmmm.... I can sit here and think I am so fair in regards to racial issues. That my generation is somehow better than ones gone before because we don't have (or, in reality..see) the rampant racism of former generations.... But I allow social/political prejudice to freely reign in my thoughts. I hear Democrat and I reach a conclusion about you...
I hear Republican and I think I know all about you. But I don't. To think I can judge you by a label with absolutely no context to your life is little different from looking at a person's skin and thinking I know anything at all about them. My point.. .I suppose... if there is one... is to be a reminder that united we stand and divided we fall.
I'd like to be a contributor to unity rather than division. But you know something...? This is all theory. I have no idea how to live this stuff out. I guess I have to trust that with understanding... if it is true understanding... comes action... and when the time is right the action is made clearer. All I can do is trust the process, right? It's all any of us can do. Thanks for listening. As always, agreement is optional, but thinking for yourself is essential. 
