Divisions and Divisiveness

"A house divided against itself cannot stand..."

                        Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865

Coming up to the second anniversary of my blog, I realize I have steered clear from what my parents always warned me never to discuss in polite company: Politics, Sex and Religion.  Well guess what? After many years on this earth, I've decided I no longer have to be polite.  After waking up each morning ( and sometimes in the middle of the night), I'm having my Howard Beale moment..."I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!...".

 The divisiveness of our world is weighing heavy on my mind.  I've avoided, thankfully, resorting to drugs and heavy drinking.  I do have my vices, such as sitting here writing this listening to Dionne Warwick on my Bose, singing old Bert Bacharach songs, or tearing up when I watch sentimental movies.  I still get the shivers when I listen to Elgar's "Enigma Variations" or the theme from "Schindler's List".  I swear when I miss a shot in tennis and my head still turns when a beautiful woman walks by (my wife says when I stop doing that, she'll know I've died!)

I realize these are defense mechanisms against wallowing in misery about the world situation. Yes, I've become a news junkie which some would call pure masochism.  Everywhere I look, I see divisiveness that is tearing us all apart.  Is that the nature of humankind?  I choose not to believe this and remain a cock-eyed optimist.  History is full of war and conflict and, perhaps, there are reasons for this that go beyond the scope of my blog.  I have become a devotee of reading about WWII history and the abject cruelty of the Nazis against my people.  I'm presently reading "The Pope and Mussolini", a long tome by David Kertzer and it calls to mind that wonderful quote by George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".  Call me a globalist but I choose to look as people as fellow citizens of the earth and not just my country.

About a year ago, I wrote a paper about the political physiology of the brain and what makes one a conservative or a liberal since this is what much of the divisions are about.  There were actually structural and biochemical differences but I don't know if this was the chicken or the egg.  So where am I going with this?

I can select just about any issue and see, particularly today, how they are driving people apart and not together.  There was the "Thanksgiving Phenomenon" as I call it during the holiday in 2017.  Families were clashing over the election results, even to the extreme where parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters and children might not be sitting together at the festive table no less conversing.  And these were FAMILIES.  Friendships have been strained or just plain dissolved over politics, which in my humble opinion, have become toxic.  Both major political parties have edged towards two extremes.

Even religions have not been immune to this fact.  The evangelical branches and the more liberal ones of Christianity have had a wedge driven between them.  American Jews are deeply divided politically depending on whether or not they wholeheartedly support Israel, and its government's closeness to our Administration.  In the Islamic faith, the Sunni and the Shia have been fighting each other for centuries.

Science has been marked by the most divisiveness I've seen in my lifetime. Evidence-based theories on climate change have spurned by skeptics, women's control of their own bodies has become a national battleground, more people are foregoing proven vaccines for their children, and our environment suffers as people are divided over stewardship of the air we breathe and the water we drink.  I spent the last years of my medical practice having to dispel bogus information from Dr. Google.  Vaccines were a topic of conspiracy theories and on-line searches were a constant source of anxiety for my patients.   While one's sexuality is a matter of genetics, it has divided us to our core where even public bathrooms are now a battlefield.

Not even mentioning divisions between countries, there are plenty enough internecine struggles within individual countries to go around.  Race, religion, territory, and possessions drive fellow citizens apart, both in our own country as in others.  We don't have to go to Yemen or Bangladesh to see this while we can observe it firsthand here in our own backyard.  Yes, we had our Civil War or War of Northern Aggression, depending on your point of view.  I watched the battles of the Alt-Right and the the so-called Anti-Fa forces at Charlottesville with tears in my eyes. Hate was the order of the day.

Yesterday, as I watched the Robert Mueller hearings, I came to the conclusion that there is nothing that will bring us together.  Each side had its agenda and never the twain will meet.  Labor and Management continue their battles over teacher's salaries and equitable pay for men and women soccer players. The Equal Rights Amendment remains locked in the drawer of some Senate Committee, and we are one of the only nations to never have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child...but of course, why should we, children don't vote.  We can't even agree on the interpretation of our Second Amendment written in 1787 during very different times when semi-automatic rifles didn't exist. Meanwhile, we become inure to news of daily shooting rampages and their lethal legacy.

All right, if you haven't figured it out by now, I'm pretty much of a liberal guy and try to control myself on social media.  One more secret vice I have is to occasionally troll some ridiculous statement I see and absorb the obvious insults.  I just felt the time was right to interject a rant in my blog.  There...I feel better already!  I realize I have friends on "both sides of the aisle" and don't mean to belittle their opinions, but, if we can't speak our minds, we are not true to ourselves. We've all learned to "walk on eggshells" socially and, I must admit I've become pretty adept at it. However, I've tired of all the divisiveness that we wake to every day and seeing this fractious gap continually widen.  Thanks for hearing me out!