A plea for old-fashioned American civility

Please, take a deep breath everyone.

We Americans have problems, no doubt, serious problems to work on, but at least in our country, the other side is not your enemy. They are, on the whole, well meaning people who have a different idea of how to solve the same problems facing all of us.

Yes, there are “bad” people out there, but they do not represent the whole. Most of us, the vast majority, are the good people.

Too often, our leaders, our media (social and traditional), our political parties, and certainly our adversaries, all want (albeit for different reasons) to keep us divided, outraged, activated, and fearful. This too often serves their short term goals, which weakens us as a people and a nation.

It is up to us to focus on what brings us together, and what our common bonds are. No matter who is elected, or what policies are put into effect, we are going to be okay. One side said the last guy was awful, the other side says the current guy is awful, we are still here. We have faced much worse as a nation than what we are dealing with now.

We might pay more or less taxes…

…we might get more or fewer services…

…we might have less firepower available to us individually…

…it might take longer and take more steps to get that firepower…

…we will not likely get everything we want…

…we may have to compromise (that isn’t evil, that is democracy)…

…we will be inconvenienced in the balance between freedom and security…

…we might actually make our society better in the process…

Crimes and terrible things will still happen. The goal is for them to happen far less often, and be less severe when they do happen.

We all want there to be help for the victims, and justice for the perpetrators.

Society will not collapse, unless we do it to ourselves.

America at its worst, is still better than many places. The number of people trying to get here is still quite a bit larger than those trying to leave.

The greatest threat to America is us not figuring out how to get along with one another. It is perhaps a shame that we can’t truly feel the suffering of others, or we might have figured it all out by now. Let’s not forget, that at is core, democracy isn’t perfect, just better than the other options.

Democracy is about giving people a way of changing our leaders and laws, without killing each other, of turning enemies instead into people who have differences of opinion, and maybe even people who can work together.

We as a nation have already experienced great pain when we have failed to come together. History also teaches us when we work together, we can achieve great success.

So whether you believe America is already great, or needs to be great again, let’s remember to be great to each other along the way.