A House Divided

You won’t find me making many, or any, political statements. Once I passed my younger youth, I no longer found sustenance in that arena, nor much deep wisdom in political discourse.  I’d go as far as to say that I watched good people become unkind and even senseless when they took to the barricades.

Unless you count love of country, you won’t get me clicking on likes or re-tweeting statements from politicos. They’ll have to have their revolutions without me.

But this is the season here in the U.S.A. So my one forage into the minefields is to suggest the absurdity of a statement I keep hearing variation of from many directions: “The country had never been more divided.”

HEHHH? We had a civil war, people!

In the Civil War of the 1860s-- 2% of Americans died. That would be the equivalent of six and a half million people today. That’s not counting the maimed, or the homes destroyed and the fields burned.

 

And the vitriol that is hurled with regularity every election cycle has, even in recent times, been more pungent. I suffer from many things, but amnesia isn’t one of them.

My only antidote is, in my personal and public conduct, to affect and maybe effect calm thoughtfulness.

We may have to wait until December for the next wave to pass.