There are at least a dozen topics right now that are brilliantly important and tons of issues we need to be talking about. Sometimes, though, it feels like we are just beating the same drum repeatedly, to no avail, while our opportunity to remedy or at least mitigate our issues evaporates.
I, as many if not most Americans, love this country. I love what it was, what it is even with all its burrs, and what it can be especially if we open our eyes and work to bring it to its full glory.
Okay, disclaimer as always, we never were perfect, but right now we are in one of our most dangerous conditions in recent history. Right now, we are a nation too obstinately divided over too many issues. Many of our chasms are ridiculous or irrelevant and are gobbling up precious time and resources; many are redundant and were resolved only to be resurrected to fan the flames of discontent and division; and some are of critical importance, yet are being ignored or left for political powers to hammer out without consulting the voice of the people.
Sometimes, we the people cave to the futility of it all or we simply don’t know what to do. Some issues are such hotbeds of so widely divided opinions, with opposite sides repeating the rhetoric and rejecting compromise that we refuse to even broach civil discussion.
Driven into complacency or apathy by sheer exhaustion, we grow weak, not only as a people, and as a nation among other nations, but even as a people facing her own government. We lose our momentum. We forget how to handle our own leadership. They beat their chests instead of negotiating for a compromise representing all their constituents.
The job of our leadership is to enforce the will of its people. Our job is to make sure they do their job. When one side fails, the other will rise. Indeed, history has proven that a government doesn’t need for her people to be busy bickering among themselves to seize the moment in its own favor. This is dangerously thin ice Americans are skating on.
Many of us fear for not just the future of America but for the health of America, here and now. The runaway train that is our news outlet pundits, who no longer have to report news but simply extrapolate on their opinion of it, is feeding too many citizens half-truths and fiction. We must demand that our leadership work and compromise to resolve our issues. Too many dig their heels in and refuse to actually govern. Without reserve, they resolve to discuss nothing, compromise on nothing, ignore the written law or, worse, advocate for and reiterate their own version, interpretation, or perception of it instead of presenting all truths and representing all their constituents.
For any of us to imitate their behavior, to dig in, to refuse to see both sides, to refuse to advocate for common sense and the compromises that are our only way to progress and sustained common sense is to not only fall prey to the way of the ignorant and avaricious, but to assist them in our own demise.
Many of us are old enough to remember some very divisive issues being brought to the streets, college campuses, and to the hill: Vietnam; women’s rights; civil rights. Indeed, many of the issues we were arguing about decades ago have still not been resolved well enough to no longer be issues. It’s an incredible reality … or should we say an absurdity?
Right now, in America, as we still battle, or battle again, many issues old enough to collect social security, we put ourselves in a critical position as a people. Though it would be counter-productive to place America’s people against her leadership, we do need to remember that a people divided are easily overtaken. Sometimes, they are overtaken by those who are supposed to be protecting them. Much of the career leadership in America today does just that.
We need to realize that compromise is the only way for the people to retain control of this nation’s destiny. Either side of any argument holding out until it gets all it wants is the fastest way to losing our democracy. We are dangerously close and, if anyone is waiting for the situation to grow more serious while we are diverted by minutiae, well, the wait was over about five years ago.
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