I Am Not Your Enemy

For the recent Independence Day long weekend, I periodically posted links on my Facebook page to what I considered to be patriotic music videos - beginning with a rousing edition of "The Stars and Stripes Forever", and including such pieces as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The Star Spangled Banner" (sung by a combined military academies choir - NOT a Hollywood type). I am certain that this confused more than a few people.

While many of my Facebook "friends" share my politics, others do not. This is sometimes a point of contention between us. "I know that you hate (fill in the blank)".

I confess to being confused.  For more years than I can remember, American citizens have been at each others' throats.  Perhaps I am fantasizing, but it seems about the time of Nixon's resignation, we developed a siege mentality, and anyone who was not just like me politically became "The Enemy", to be lumped in first with the Communists, and more recently The Taliban or al Quaeda.  So I know that, being a moderate-to-liberal Democrat, my conservative Republican "friends" were stumped by my obvious display of patriotism.  How could I possibly be patriotic when I was certainly someone whose opinions need to be obliterated in the coming mid-term elections?  Patriotism is, of course, the private domain of conservative Republicans...right?  Because we all know that all Democrats are socialists............

In a nation that was founded on dissent, we have made that dissent equal to treason.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"The history of Poland... gives a lesson which all our countrymen should study: the example of a country erased from the map of the world by the dissensions of its own citizens." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1811. ME 13:66

It doesn't really matter which party controls the White House or Congress.  Whichever party has the upper hand in numbers, the other party will vote against in all things.  Doesn't matter what makes common sense (like extending unemployment benefits during this time of severe recession).  Democrats are for it, so Republicans are against it.  And during the Bush Administration, the opposite was equally true.

It is no longer possible to be bi-partisan, because anyone who is not like me is "wholly other" (to use theological terminology) and therefore the enemy.  Those who govern us no longer work for the common good, but for the preservation of their party alone.

With thinking like this, we never would have prevailed in World War II, nor put astronauts on the moon.  Those were both cases of working together, an ability which has atrophied due to under-use.

So here's what I would like everyone to know: I AM NOT THE ENEMY!  Although we may choose different paths to get there, our destination is the same: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  There are enemies out there, to be certain.  If I could put them on "wanted posters", I would put a bounty on "Apathy", "Cynicism", "Self-Absorption", "Hubris"..............but not on my neighbor down the street who voted for McCain/Palin, nor the husband of a friend who listens to Rush Limbaugh every day.

Unless we can come out of our siege mentality, our potential ability to influence for justice will surely soon be "erased from the map of the world".

I am not the enemy.  Neither are you.