More than Enough Malice to Go Around

When I was a wee slip of a lad, today was a stand-alone holiday honoring the birth of Abraham Lincoln. We don't have time for that kind of razzamatazz anymore and roll his birthday and Washington's along with a passing reference to all those who have served as President into one holiday which will actually be next Monday. 

Abraham Lincoln was a great patriot before he was elected to the Presidency of the United States. On June 16, 1858, in accepting the Republican party nomination to be their Senatorial candidate in Illinois two years before becoming the standard-bearer in what was to be the most contentious presidential election in our nation's history until recent times, he noted, "A house divided itself cannot stand." 

He was speaking about the split in our nation over slavery, and he was absolutely and tragically correct. That same Union he was murdered trying to preserve is, even as I type this and you read it, rending itself asunder as we sort ourselves out, not as red and blue, not as white and black, or rich and poor, but rather, as urban versus rural. 

The former tends to have a higher (and more costly) quality of life and feels constrained by the latter while the latter sees itself pitied and abandoned by the former. Our elections do nothing, absolutely nothing, to help us bridge the gap that's becoming a chasm as we talk at rather than speak with one another.

As confounded and angry as I am that anyone could support someone for the office of President as manifestly incompetent and as venal and vicious (to say nothing of vacuous) as the presumptive GOP nominee, I have to accept that his supporters see me as dangerously disruptive and most disquieting of all, we are both correct. So now what?

Our nation's motto is "E Pluribus Unum," 'out of many, one,' but we've mistaken patriotism for tribalism and decided that while you (whoever you are) may look like we do, you know what it is? You're not one of us. I'm not sure there's a way back to the place we were before but I do know we have to try to find it.
-bill kenny