It’s not so much that I’m mad about the shenanigans that are going on in Washington; no, it’s that I’m terribly upset that our country has come to this state of ‘hatred.’ Sure, we’ve been through these episodes before in our history and we have survived. One can go all the way back to the Pilgrims versus the Puritans I suppose, but I prefer the Revolutionary War as a time when neighbor hated neighbor and, in too many cases, murder was the outcome. The not-so-humorous joke is that more Americans were killed in the Civil War than in any other this nation has fought. We have been a divided nation since our founding, but I’m not certain that in my nearly eight decades of life I have ever seen a division greater than today.
We are supposed to be, “one nation under God,” and yet, there is such a separation of wealth that it would be more correct to say, “Many nations under God.” Heck, when you stop and think about it, we can’t even decide on which God it is that we are supposed to be under. We are not one nation; we are fragments of a former nation, and if someone doesn’t grasp the reigns of leadership in the very near future, we are going to become a non-nation, weakening itself to the point that we may as well go back and becoming another colony of Great Britain.
I am sick to death of the pettiness that I find in our nation’s supposed capitol, Washington, D.C. From President Obama’s pettiness of closing the White House to tourists to Rand Paul’s twelve-hour filibuster to prevent a vote on confirmation of John Brennan as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), there is nothing but childish action and reaction taking place. It really is quite sad to see grown men and women, supposedly intelligent people behaving in such a manner.
“If we don’t cut spending we will be leaving a massive debt for our children and grandchildren to pay.” Okay and your point is? Hell, we’ve been in hock up to our ears for so long that even our own citizens have stopped caring. We are a nation of “I don’t care as long as I get mine; a nation of NIMBY’s; a nation of hooray for me and to hell with you!” I can’t be hard on Congress and the White House when all I have to do is watch how people act in the supermarket when there is the threat of a winter storm. When those same folks start bitching about, “…oh, we lost power and by the time it came back on I had to throw out all the food in the freezer.” Hey, ain’t life a bitch when your freezer is so full? Did you even consider what homeless people were doing while you were stocking up, afraid you might not be able to get out for a couple of days? Of course you didn’t; you were getting yours and to hell with the rest of the world!
Somehow, we have gone off the rails. I can’t tell you exactly why or how this has happened, but I know that it has. I remember when a couple of us would go up to old Mr. Feeney’s house after a snowstorm and shovel his driveway and the path to his front door. If some other kids came along, they’d usually lend a hand. Of course, we went to other people’s houses and charge them for shoveling, but Mr. Feeney lived on our street and he was ‘old.’ I’m quite certain he wasn’t as old as we thought, but then, what did we know? I just don’t see that attitude with children or adults today.
Are there any numbers of isolated cases where people do good things for others? Of course, there are, but we don’t hear about them because there is so much bad news to talk about. “If it bleeds it leads” is still the motto of our news media. Who wants to hear about a group of people getting together with their ‘buy-one-get-one-free’ coupons just to benefit a food bank or a homeless shelter? It doesn’t sell and it doesn’t attract advertising dollars.
Whether you are citing Leviticus 19:18, “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD” or Mark 12:31, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these,” or not citing the Holy Bible at all, it’s a pretty good idea to remember that there are a whole lot of people out there who can use the help if we can give it.
The art of compromise is not difficult. If we are to grow as a nation, our leaders must learn to put aside their pettiness. We, each and every man and woman in this country, must begin to look on themselves as Americans first and behave as Americans should.
Dick Bishop
Dick Bishop's Blog 