Why do I mention all this? It is the backdrop to my next comment: it rips my heart out to see the American people so divided and through that division be threatening the very fabric of the nation, its future, its role in the world and its potential to improve the lot of all humanity.....
Unfortunately, we Americans on both sides of the isle are spoiled brats with no true sense of scale. What do I mean by "no sense of scale". Well, if you ask someone to rate something on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being the worst and 10 being the best you will get very polarized answers. Everything will be 0s and 1s and 9s and 10s...
ANd this is the problem with American Politics. Everything is a 0 or a 10. There is virtually no middle ground. "Everything" the other party stands for is wrong, immoral, dangerous and wrong. "Everything" my party stands for is right, moral, courageous, and best for America.
Historically, the US has had an external threat (the USSR) to unite us. It gave us a sense of perspective and sense of internal scale. Sure, I don't like the other party but we are all Americans and if we don't unite then the USSR will run us over.
However, when the Soviet Union collapsed late 80s, we no longer had an external threat to unite us. Our political makeup is such that we need "an enemy" and so we turned inwards looking for an enemy. As a nation we have decided that "the enemy" is the other political party.
Which is suicidal. I mean, how would your body fair if the right and left sides of your body were convinced that the other side was hell bent on "destroying" the body??? How efficient would you be if everything you tried to do with your left hand was hindered by the right and vice versa.
We have now entered an era where we put party ahead of country or worse, we believe that our party IS the country and that the other party is actually actively trying to destroy the country....
