As we celebrate the country’s birth are we witness to its demise? Democracies haven’t historically been conquered but have fallen by implosion. Our divided country is amid concurrent and sequential civil wars. Can the great divides be breached? Does anyone really want to try? We have blindly marched down polarizing paths of ideology. With every step moving further apart and less tolerant. Every step closer to tribalism. The Democrats are fighting between the Progressives and the Traditionalist. The Republicans are clearly in a civil war between the MAGA/TEA (aka MAGAT) and their centralists (aka RINO). The Southern Baptists are infighting between those supporting MAGATs, and intragroups who have called them out as ‘political whores’. This on top of their schism associated with sex offenders, groomers, their defenders and those horrified and abused.
Extreme ideology is more rigid and focused on retaining power and less about compromise. We listen only to those who believe as we do. A country which once prided itself on the art of compromise, compassion, and dialog has become an angry cesspool of intolerance. And the Supreme Court upending abortion rights has thrown fuel on an incendiary scene.
In this civil war, public meetings are now yelling forums. Elected officials and volunteers have been threatened and harassed. Protestors keep vigils outside of private homes and threaten assignation. We have been seduced by leaders who will propagate lies, spin the details, and publicly seek revenge upon those who counter their propaganda. They have not only lost their moral fiber but have also lost their moral compass. A civil war of words, of ideals, and of principles has been corrupted and weaponized. The truth twisted my knaves’ setting traps for fools, believed by the ill and uniformed.
The hate speech and now the drumbeat of religious violence have reached a crescendo. The first physical skirmishes of the civil war they spawned have taken place. We now have two forms of civil wars, a war of words and one of escalating open conflict. Intolerant racial groups plan and execute violence on other races. Intolerant organizations and legislators plan and wage siege on minority groups. Not because they are bad people but because they are a minority and are simply different. A scourge on the country, or so are told. And so, the means justifies the actions. We have been whipped into a frenzy. We have breached the halls of Congress and violently attacked the very standard of our Democracy. We have rioted in the street and the factions are violently collided at an increasing rate.
The extremists are getting what they have wanted; an excuse to ‘burn it down’. It isn’t about building together anymore. It is about isolating, excluding, and forcing an agenda, regardless of impact. Commonality, civility, compassion have been replaced with tribalism, hate speech, vulgarity, and violence. The implosion of our democracy has started; but it can be stopped. Those who have tried to tear her down have to be held accountable. We must be a country where no one is above the law. The consequences of placing anyone above the law, in the long term, is worse than the threat of potential conflict. We already face the conflict. There is a difference between free speech and hate speech. One results in communal growth along common lines and the latter yields visceral threats and physical conflict. It’s ours to choose. Democracy isn’t just a word. This Democracy is bigger than each of us because it is all of us. But these civil wars can be the beginning of the end. If we let them. #NeverFeartheDream
simplebender 