Recently a friend of mine told me about a documentary she had seen on the early days of the coal industry in West Virginia. She told of how the mining companies would bring in different ethnic groups, Africans, Eastern Europeans, Italians, and actively promote racism between them and the Anglos living there in an effort to "divide and conquer" their work force. Pit them against one another and they would not see the company as the real enemy.
That thought has been resonating within me ever since. I keep seeing or think I see it in so many other instances. Perhaps it is a learned behavior that has become so ingrained in American life that we know nothing else.
I get that feeling about this election. Granted in a presidential election year in the U.S. the political parties are more polarized than usual, but then you got all this gray area, fueled by the internet. Political pundits, conspiracy theorists and people with a need to manufacture drama.
There was the email that McCain was ineligible to be President because he was born in the former U.S. territory of the Panama Canal Zone. There was the email that Obama was ineligible because he was not actually born in Hawai'i, but in Kenya and some how was brought back to the U.S. at a later date. There is the news media, interviewing and official at the GOP Convention ostensibly about the curtailing of event due to Hurricane Gustav, and their questions all about Bristol Palin and her baby.
To me, it seems like there are forces at work to divide and conquer American, forces coming from both ends of the spectrum, and I am just not going to buy into it. I refuse to buy into it. All the candidates have said and done things they wish they could have taken back, regret now, were misunderstood about. All of them advocate something that I can't go along with, all of them are loosing some of their humanity by being in the public eye. The issues in the campaign don't just take back seat, they are not even allowed in the car because all the room is took up with character examination and assassination.
There has got to be something better. There has got to be a better way. If we were a smaller country it would be simpler, if were were a poor country it might be too. Instead we have become a country of big over grown children jealous of one another's toys.
Topic: Shakesthegrounds Rumblings (Read 2581878 times)