Up until a month ago, I had had a 12-year moratorium on dating while I helped raise (at one time or another) all six of my grandchildren. Now that task is about done, I’m trying to write a book about the effect of (among other things) religion on our society, so to ask me not to discuss politics or religion is like asking a fish not to breathe water (chuckle). Maybe a taboo is the more reasonable approach, but our society is seriously out of touch with reality and a good 40% of us are in almost violent disagreement with another good 40% of us. Isn’t it about time we got to the bottom of this religious/political division which separates “red states” and “blue states” into a standoff where our federal government is stalemated and unable to unite in favor of what’s right and just?
My sainted mother was a devout and active fundamental Baptist while my father was an agnostic whose parents were fundamental Christian missionaries who spent much of their lives ministering in the jungles of central west Africa. Mom spared no effort in trying to “save” my soul while her church disrespected her and relegated her to third class membership due to a divorce she never wanted. I was suckled on this stuff and pushed into the controversy by my school system’s adoption of the modifying phrase “under God” starting in fifth grade. I was forced into three years of military servitude by my society’s violent attitude towards all things called “Communist” and their false belief that South Vietnam was a legitimate country when our NATO allies set it up as a dictatorship supporting feudalism and colonialism. I’ve been further disrespected by women wishing to be “equally yoked” or insisting that “all there is is love” when our military outspends the next ten countries combined and exports our violent tendencies by defending all kinds of mislabeled causes with death and destruction as well as 200,000 armed and dangerous people in other people’s countries all over the globe blowing things up and shooting up cities and neighborhoods for what turns out to be misguided, misinformed reasons.
I cannot sit idly by when my grandchildren spend almost all their free time playing games and watching movies that glorify violence and demonstrate its effectiveness, the churches around me pretend everything is OK, and my government is ruled by a consortium of wealthy people who represent billionaires as their money managers with corporate profit as their sole motivation.
©April 2021, David N. Dodson, Phoenix, AZ
Dave's World 
I couddn’t agree more with most of your comments. Having living abroad for quite some time, I see the idioy of our divisions and conflicting values. A Nigerian once aid “If the USA falls, it will because of tribalism.” I said w had no tribalism. “yes, you do, you have Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans,African Amerians, all insisting o n their special rights. The demonization of people don’t agree with us is right out of the Kremlin playbook Victory without Bloodshed. A Christian myself, I deplore those who proclaim murder to a foetus yet have no trouble giving guns to teenagers so they can murder childdren.
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Dear Mary, Thanks so much for your comment.
As to tribalism being America’s primary problem, I’m forced to disagree with your Nigerian friend, though I kind of see why he might see it that way. My father was “Chief of the Children” in the tribe into which he had been born (and expected to have black skin by most of his tribe, though his parents were white missionaries.) This was in the Ndungu Province of Angola in May of 1911 to June or July, 1915. I doubt this tribal attachment had much effect in later years other than to add a bit to his narcissistic tendencies.
Much more lethal and destructive is our common attachment to “greatness” by all races, classes, political parties and platforms and our united, lethal, and overwhelmingly violent responses to anything, anyone, or even any concept deemed a threat to our nation, no matter how unlikely or contrived that “threat” actually is or was. It is why we hoard nuclear weaponry, distribute it around to many countries, continents, oceans and seas of the world and are jealous of other nations who aspire to a fractionally equal power/counter-threat. It’s why we invaded (lethally but ineffectively) Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and why we’re threatening North Korea and Iran.
So war is our go-to uniter and we splinter when it’s removed.
Our belief in the effectiveness of violence and violent threats is pathological but pervasive.
And our delusions about the foresight and rectitude of our founding fathers who almost unanimously ignored the human rights of the people they owned, the previous owners of America, and their mothers, wives and daughters is also misguided and continuously leads us back into the abuses of a less-enlightened age. (France did NOT own the Louisiana Purchase when Thomas Jefferson “paid” them to “buy” it. Ditto Russia and “Seward’s Folly” and this leaves out a whole lot of other shenanigans all over the world. Women didn’t generally vote until 1920 and haven’t yet led our supposedly right-thinking, egalitarian country.)
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I think the religious right might also have something to do with this as well. Catholic “Truth” is still against birth control while decrying all of the symptoms the world is facing because of overpopulation (Populorum Progresso, the papal encyclical of 3/26/1967 seen 50 years later): http://www.davesworld.org/2019/07/17/review-populorium-progressio-of-3-26-1967/. And the fundamentalists are trying to get back to the days that our founding fathers left Europe to escape: mixing religion and politics. I am heartened to discover that many of those rebellious gentlemen were agnostics and atheists.
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