This is America….Abraham Lincoln, perhaps our greatest President, made no bones about it in his famous Gettysburg Address when he stated unequivocally that this country is a “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” My question is …which people are we talking about today? Our country has degenerated into an armed camp of hatred, and the politicians are stoking the fires of this hatred!

I am not really a political person and am not a registered Democrat or Republican, I am listed as “declines to state” because I like to make up my own mind when I vote, which I do quite religiously….I figure that if I don’t vote I have no right to bitch about whatever new laws are passed, so I do vote…That is my right as an American…Other people in other countries don’t have it so easy, and I am proud to be an American and to exercise my franchise to vote as I see fit……

But lately even I have been sensing a groundswell of disaffection and alienation from the people around me…It is like we have lost some fundamental control of our own government, it is like somebody has hijacked the Congress….It is hard to put a finger on it, this feeling of alienation, but it seems like the issues the government is debating are not really the relevant issues of the day…It is more like the politics of hatred and class warfare rather than doing what is best for the country….

I am talking about the two established parties in this country, the Democrats and the Republicans…It seems like they are more and more consumed lately with petty partisan politics and special interest groups, and engage more in rude dismissals and put downs of each others policies than they do in uniting to govern the country fairly and equitably….Their hatred and contempt for each other seems to be the driving force behind their increasingly maniacal desire to have their own way…

It seems like both of the major party’s have degenerated into an unwieldy mass of splinter groups, all so
passionately concerned with their own narrow, distorted view of the issues, and will barely tolerate even the other splinter groups within their own party….Where are the uniters, not the dividers?

It has all become a shifting, slippery sliding slope, a mass of special interest groups forming temporary political alliances on each and every different issue when it comes down to a vote on a specific piece of legislation, with neither party having any clear cut consensus, no overall policy…

The Republicans can’t wait for the incumbent lame duck President Obama to finish out his term, and he is equally resolved to pass as much of his legislation, mostly for the social good, that he can in the time he has left…The Republicans smugly vow to overturn all his latest legislative efforts as soon as they regain power….

I guess they assume the country is just dying to elect a Republican President…That of course remains to be seen, because as badly splintered as the Democrats are, the Republicans are even more deeply divided…. At last count, there were 13 Republicans running for President!

Like I said, I am basically non partisan and as a more or less neutral observer it seems to me that the Republicans are the most deeply flawed party because of the extreme divergence of their splinter groups…The Alice in Wonderland Republican Teacup faction, for example, is so out of touch with reality it is a wonder they can agree with each other….

This makes it even more difficult for the responsible moderate Republican leaders, who are hard pressed to accommodate not only the Teacup party but the many other outright reactionary groups in the far right wing of their own party, to formulate any unified, cohesive policy…I had to laugh when I saw that the ultra right wing Fox News “declined to renew the contract of Sarah Palin.” I guess she was too much of a  reactionary even for them!

The Democrats are not without fault here either…They too realize Obama is a lame duck President and they are hedging their bets, trying to see which way the political winds are blowing before they commit to any specific legislation one way or the other…The extreme liberal wing of the Democrats are also at odds with the moderate Democratic leaders, and have been for many years, but it seems that the divisions have never been as pronounced as they seem to be lately…

I don’t get it, politics is by it’s very definition definition the art of compromise, and all it would take would be for the moderate Republicans and the moderate Democrats to form a workable political coalition that would satisfy most people…They will never satisfy everybody, especially within their own parties, but they have to dig deep down and at least make the effort….There is too much at stake here not to do so, even though the special interest groups are all lobbying so hard for their pet projects…

Of course, it is a political axiom that these same special interest groups, like the NRA, are major political cash contributors and have invested heavily in candidates that will represent their viewpoints in Congress, but at some point there has to be somebody to just say STOP the madness…This nit picking, vicious rhetoric of hatred and divisiveness on every single issue MUST stop, or we will achieve nothing as a country…The politics of hatred has never been stronger, the willingness to compromise has never been weaker…We are polarizing our own country, building walls instead of bridges…

As it stands now, the Congress is a virtual hostage to all the special interest groups that got them elected in the first place…This must cease immediately, because giving in to all these special interest groups is madness, and will only lead to anarchy….

We can only hope and pray that the moderates in each party, Democrats and Republicans, can at least put aside their petty differences and moderate and modulate their most extreme splinter groups to form some sort of consensus, a cohesive national policy, even if the cost to them personally is one and done with their terms of office….

America is at a crossroads, in immigration reform, gun control, racial equality, women’s rights, gay rights, repair of our infrastructure, the economy as a whole and most specifically in our foreign policy….It is time to put aside all these petty differences and for the moderates on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats alike to do what politicians are elected to do in the first place: Compromise!…..

Put aside your selfish, greedy interests and DO something about this mess we are in! Forge a cohesive national policy addressing the major issues of our time that both sides can live with before it is too late…..The time is now, and now is the time!…

After all, in the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin when he signed the Declaration of Independence:

“We must all hang together or we will surely hang separately.”