DIVIDE AND BE CONQUERED
DIVIDE AND BE CONQUERED
SUMMERTIME — when we used to spend our hours reenergizing, swimming and having barbecues in the back yard. That was when news came on the radio and papers, slow and steady. Editorials were where the opinions resided. Facts were on the news page. We talked to our next door neighbors about how the grass grows. But that is no longer the way of today.
This month, I returned from a week in Israel with David, Sharonne and our 8 grandchildren, My days were filled with serving daily lunches — cheese sandwiches with catsup, hot dogs with catsup — playing games of Uno and chess and Sorry — visiting the Israel Museum and the Children’s Science Center.
Then we all spent three days together in New York City — one afternoon on the Intrepid, seeing the Space Shuttle on exhibit, learning about the Hubble telescope’s discoveries — another at the top of Liberty Tower,
the tribute to America’s resilience after 9/11 — another walking in Central Park — and of course! a quick trip to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and Central Park South. It was a little return to the summers of old.
But then I returned to my desk at home to find myself buried beneath emails filled with vitriolic positions. The subjects varied: the Iran Nuclear Deal and the threat of a nuclear capable Iran; the Black Matters movement in the face of injustices; gay rights and marriage rights; the lifting of the Cuban embargo; immigration policy; and the bullets and darts of the presidential hopefuls.
So many of the messages have one common thread: Most are NOT looking for common ground to build and move forward. The few who are seeking a way to work together are not beating their drums. The quiet voice of reason is drowned in the cacophony of harmful divisiveness, self-centered motives, and anger filled with unappeased frustrations. At the root of these war cries is fear — fear of not being heard, not gaining ground, not winning, not getting all they want.
The more the voices of self-serving bully-pulpit scream out, the more they divide us, and the more ground they lose.
The more they divide one person from another, the greater the chances that fewer people are interested in listening, and they are only talking to those who agree with them.
Eventually, those who cannot listen, those who are less interested in working together and more interested in pushing a narrow agenda, will find it is increasingly likely that they will be conquered by their own unreasonableness. And we will become a country further divided. E Pluribus Unum will become an unknown piece of history. The more we are divided, the more we conquer ourselves.
Better and safer to talk about how the grass grows or how much catsup to spread on your bread.
August 25, 2015
Remind me to buy stock in catsup!!