By Deplorable Andrew Allen
Hey Ben, we tried.
I mean, we really did.
But somewhere, somehow, along the way we lost it. You told us we could have a republic if we could keep it. We did good for around 200 years.
Mr. Franklin, I’m afraid we lost it.
And Ted, we forget what you told us a century ago. You told us that if people tried “to keep segregated” with people of their “own origin and separated from the rest of America” that our America would be one of divided allegiances. Rough Rider, we knew better.
Wasn’t it Honest Abe that warned us about divided allegiances when he taught us that a house divided couldn’t stand?
Look at us.
We’re a people that no longer have any sense of reverence. Those things we ought to revere we disparage. Then we manufacture things we pretend to hold in esteem. Things like endless conversations on race, the various isms, sexual identity, and climate change. Eventually, we let those things come into conflict – consider the Hollaback controversy (i.e., logic pretzel twisted when nobody could figure out whether Hollaback activists were right for exposing sexism or were racists for showing that men of color reacted differently than white men when presented with an attractive woman strutting their way in skin-tight attire).
We have regressed to the point where colleges are actually allowing students to racially re-segregate dorms their grandparents bled and sometimes died to desegregate half a century or so ago, and Harry Potter murals are treated as though the Klan showed up on campus for a lynching.
In the meantime, while peaceful thugs burn any given American city down and be damned the poor people of color that will suffer long term when they no longer have a grocery or drug store to shop in, somewhere a so-called lone wolf is constructing a plan. Bullets. Bombs. Knives. A runaway truck. One-man show, husband and wife team, or a group. What will the next terror attack look like?
Ben, I wish we’d come to our senses sooner. Sometimes I hope we’re not too late.
But then I look at our national trajectory and every indicator thrown up as Breaking News or entertainment and I wonder how this story ends.
Image: photo credit: jepsculpture Keys To Community: Installation 4 via photopin (license)
