The American Divorce— The Country Needs A Therapist!

Posted on November 5, 2020 by Sean T. Smith

All we seem to do is fight! The insults, the hate, the verbal assaults! Grrr!

As of this writing, the votes are still being counted in the 2020 Presidential election, and the lawsuits are starting. The internet is rife with mean-spirited memes and declarations of woe from both sides. Joe Biden needs only 6 more Electoral Collage votes to clinch the election, and people are going insane.

Both sides are in a state of shock. Liberals are appalled that Donald Trump got 3 million more votes this year than he did in 2016, after 233,000 COVID deaths and a nonstop string of tone-deaf gaffes and blunders too long to go into. Conservatives believe that the country is taking a turn to communism, and that Biden and the dreadful Kamala Harris will be coming for their guns and bibles and first-born children.

There is no middle ground.

Both sides view your choice of candidate as a kind of litmus test. Most of my liberal friends (and I am liberal, duh!) have been purging their social media of Trump supporters. They say things like “if you’re a Trump supporter, unfriend me now.” Many liberals believe that if someone voted for Trump, the only possible explanation is that they are some combination of racist, ignorant or cruel.

A political choice becomes a moral test. Friendships and families are ripped apart because of it. How are people okay with this?

Trump supporters view liberals as the enemy of democracy and capitalism. They are fearful that a Biden presidency means stripping away civil liberty, increased taxes. They view liberals as unpatriotic, Godless, arrogant, and immoral.

Surging Tribalism

The entire “us versus them” mentality that has gripped the nation is inherently unhealthy. If it continues to this degree, there’s no way it can end well for the country.

Biden ran a campaign based around unifying the country, and ran only 10% attack ads. Trump was all about attacking, sowing doubt about the electoral process from the time he got elected in 2016, spreading conspiracy theories that his followers devoured like ice cream on a hot summer day.

The fact is, even if Biden is sworn in, he faces an uphill battle, likely an impossible one, to unify the country. His pleas for unity fell upon deaf ears for half of the country.

COVID-19 could have been a unifying event for the country; we have lost more Americans to the virus than we did in the first two World Wars. Usually wars have a way of unifying the country. Not so with COVID, which has been so politicized that it only served to divide us further even as it continues to kill and spread.

Irreconcilable Differences

We are split as a country along various lines. The rural versus urban divide is likely the most obvious. The underlying racial, economic, and religious divides are obvious. Regionally, we have enormous divisions between the north, south, Midwest, and west coast.

A bit of historic perspective…

We have always been divided, despite our name. Leading up to the Revolution, 1/3 of the population supported the Crown. Following the Revolution, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists fought bitterly for the soul of the country at its inception. Before the Civil War, the north and south were economic rivals and ultimately went to war at a cost of over 600,000 American lives.

The Industrial Revolution brought a seismic shift from an agrarian economy to huge growth in our cities. The surge of immigrants and refugees helped to boost our economy and the idea that we were a “melting pot” took root. The Great Depression and World War Two unified us for a brief time, until the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War clarified our differences yet again. But the differences were always there.

Guns and Lawyers

I predict that the United States will cease to exist as we know it within fifty years. It will disassemble into four to six separate nations, mostly without bloodshed, in the way of a somewhat amicable divorce. Everybody is going to hurt, but if we cannot fix what’s broken, then it will be for the best.

Intolerance seems to be the norm, and a lack of communication, understanding, and forgiveness is on the rise. All we do these days is scream at each other, shifting the blame, and no one is happy.

I hope I’m wrong.

Where Are Our Heroes?

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Sean T. Smith

Every generation has its heroes, and while they have looked different, they share one essential trait- they are, by definition, heroic. At the moment, our pop-culture is dominated by super-heroes. Captain America and Ironman along with the MCU have captured our collective imagination. Back in the 80’s it was ripped men like Arnold and Stallone. Before that it was John Wayne. Those fictional heroes were all willing to sacrifice themselves to protect others, or to protect the greater good.

What about real heroes?

Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier in World War Two, was wounded multiple times throughout the war, putting himself under direct fire to save his men. He received the Medal of Honor for mounting a burning tank-destroyer and laying down .50 caliber machine-gun fire on advancing German troops and tanks for over an hour. He was wounded and only ceased when he ran out of ammunition. He killed over fifty attackers in that one assault. If Stallone acted the scene in a movie, it would be hard to believe.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the hero of the civil rights movement, risking his life to march and speak out against codified racism and inequality, and he was ultimately killed for his stand.

John McCain, former prisoner of war, Presidential candidate, and Senator, became a hero in my own eyes, when he famously cast the deciding vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. He bucked his own party, and chose to vote with his conscience for the good of the nation. He died shortly thereafter of brain cancer.

We desperately need real heroes now.

The United States of America is in the midst of a crisis. The executive branch is grossly over extending its power, largely unchecked by congress. From the war on science, the media, and the truth to the ongoing denial of Russian interference in our elections, the Trump administration is proving to be a real threat to our democracy.

Congress must begin the impeachment process, regardless of the political calculus, because it is Congress’s duty to be a check upon the executive branch. There are certain threats which transcend politics, and an administration which displays disregard for the rule of law is one.

It seems that Speaker Pelosi is intent upon running out the clock because she fears, understandably, that the Senate will not convict, no matter what. Where are the heroes and patriots in the Senate?

It’s time for our elected leaders to actually lead. There must be consequences for a President who obstructs justice and colludes with foreign powers to steal an election. History will remember.

War on the Poor: Death of the American Dream

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Sean T. Smith

With Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio throwing their hats into the ring for the Presidency, the battle for the Oval office is beginning in earnest, and Americans can brace themselves for exhausting months of harsh rhetoric, attack ads, and promises that will be broken. The poor of this country will continue to suffer.

Steinbeck’s brilliant novel The Grapes of Wrath depicts the hopeless, terrifying poverty of the Great Depression in an era before “safety nets.” Since the recession which began in 2008, the middle class has been hit hard, with the number of people receiving some kind of public assistance soaring, many good jobs vanishing, earnings remaining stagnant, and the cost of living steadily increasing. We keep hearing about a recovery, and indeed Wall Street is enjoying record highs. Main Street has yet to reap similar rewards.

Against this backdrop, the hard-core conservative talking heads have embarked on a systematic strategy of demonizing the poor, portraying them as lazy, dependent, entitled, and faintly evil. This campaign has worked. People like Reince Preibus, the chairman of the RNC, have framed the issue in such a way that the shrinking and embattled middle-class, one paycheck away from needing help themselves, buy into the distorted caricature. Democrats have fueled the fire in some ways, and have fired back by seeming to couch the debate in ways that make it seem as though class-warfare is actually happening. Both sides are wrong.

The country is losing

If there is any sort of class war it is so one-sided that labeling it a war is like calling the United States invasion of Grenada a war. The elites, the upper 1% are crushing the rest of us. The irony is that they’ve managed to convince the nation to fight for them. It’s a shell game on a global scale. People like the Koch Brothers are buying and will continue to purchase elections for their own economic gain.While the average American saw savings shrink, retirement accounts vanish, jobs go to China, those at the top of the food chain got richer. And many of them did it with corporate welfare which dwarfs any sort of public assistance programs. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Banks bailed out by the Federal government held on to that money, earning billions from interest, while still not making loans and injecting more capital into the economy. Here’s a link to ten corporations with billions in earnings that didn’t pay taxes. It includes Bank of America and Facebook. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-us-companies-paying-no-taxes-2013-03-26

Average CEO compensation is up %50 over the last year, with top CEOs earning upwards of Fifty Million bucks. Meanwhile, the multi-national corporations are staunchly opposed to increasing the minimum wage for workers and continue to shift jobs overseas. To distract us from this fact, the media blitz focuses on the poor. Politicians buy into it, left and right, taking the money doled out by lobbyists for entities which don’t give a damn whether the average person lives or dies. Despite the absurd Citizen’s United decision by the Supreme Court, corporations are not people. We all know that.

I have absolutely nothing against wealth, but I do take issue with unadulterated greed which leads to great evil.Rather than pulling together as a great nation, we are increasingly divided, pointing fingers and accusing rather than trying to solve the problems we face. We are being manipulated.

Poverty is not an issue which should be owned by either the left or the right, for it is an American issue. Conservative Christians might take notes from the life and words of Jesus, who spent his time with the poor and the outcast, the disenfranchised and the hurting. Liberals should take a hard look at the Democratic party and the candidates they are continually presented with, who are just as much in bed with corporate money as the Republicans are.Politicians speak out of both sides of their mouths, held on short leashes constructed with money. Movements like Occupy Wall Street end up being polarizing and accomplishing nothing, as the protesters are marginalized and look foolish, the rest of the nation turning up their noses as the cliches of poverty and lassitude are displayed on national television.

“Since the market is right, poor people get what they deserve.”

Poverty must be a choice, then. Rather than try to improve their lives, the poor enjoy wonderful lives of lavish vacations, new cars, and mansions gilded with gold. Some of them even have phones. Damn them!

The fact is, no one wants to be poor. Furthermore, they don’t want to remain so. I’ve been reasonably well off, and I’ve been poor. At the moment, I routinely work fifty hour weeks, plus spend another twenty or thirty hours writing. I don’t want to remain poor. Since the market crashed, the company I worked for went out of business, my customers have less money, and I work harder to earn less. I struggle every month just to keep a roof over my children’s heads and keep the lights on. I know personally other people in the same predicament.

Solutions

Education is the best way to combat poverty in the long run. Rather than cutting funding for schools and teachers, the Federal and State governments need to focus on this issue. Job training and trade programs should be much more accessible, and should begin in High School. Our education system does not prepare the majority of high school graduates for the real world. The fact is that most grads do attend college, yet school programs focus on this carreer path almost exclusively. As manufacturing jobs have fled the country to go to China, there is a great vacuum left for jobs which pay a living wage. Upward mobility, a crucial aspect of our culture is becoming a thing of the past.

Recognizing our similarities and common humanity, rather than focusing on our differences would go a long way toward restoring a hurting nation. It’s always easier to point a finger at some one else, rather than looking in the mirror, though, so America’s war on the poor will continue while the rich get richer and the American Dream dies a slow death. I pray every day for my beloved, broken country.