Oh, the news: filled with harbingers of division.
Will the U.S. eventually split up — turn into an amalgam of five or six republics?
It’s a reasonable question we have asked before and likely will be asking again.
For the polarization of America is in full swing — and there is no longer middle ground, or at least, any middle ground, any enduring commonality, is rapidly dwindling.
You’ve noticed that in politics: it’s either hyper-capitalism or socialism, either pro-life or pro-late-term abortion, either pro-family or pro-transgenderism, either far right or far left.
Opposing mobs scream at each other at the sentencing of a former presidential advisor. They shout at each other over impeachment. They berate each other over Supreme Court nominees. They disagree vociferously over health care (which, in the din, continues to skyrocket).
There is a yawning, growing chasm between the rich and poor, between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” between races and (at least in the view of liberals) genders. How many genders are there?
Cultism rules the land. So does resentment. Everyone resents everyone who doesn’t agree with them. Some is understandable. One cannot tolerate evil sexuality. On other matters, it is less easy to comprehend. That’s because often there is disagreement for the sake of disagreement. Whatever one side says is automatically wrong in the eyes of the other. Look at the primary debates! Look at the internecine warfare in Washington!
Jesus said a nation divided against itself cannot stand, and division is an energy, He added, from Satan.
It is also a chastisement. How many know that Abraham Lincoln himself formally stated (on March 30, 1863, in a proclamation appointing a national fast day!), that the Civil War was perhaps “a punishment, inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins.” He said that “those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.” He used the very word “chastisement,” and mentioned “the overruling power of God.” United we stand.
But how can there be unity when Christians are even threatened with violating gay “rights” by following the admonitions in the Bible?
Does “American” any longer quite hold its intended meaning?
We’ve wondered that periodically and never more than now. One poll says that most Americans believe the nation can once more come together. Perhaps.
But the trend of division has been accelerating (note political rallies, which are beginning to resemble the first stirrings of major movements). It is sin that divides and it goes beyond abortion. There is immorality in all walks of life and to the furthest political boundaries.
A hundred years ago, notes U.S. News and World Report, “In the United States, there was one setback after another. A lethal influenza epidemic started the year and devastated many households. There was a wave of anarchist bombings, including one explosive that detonated outside the house of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in Washington. Palmer blamed communists and he responded with a series of legally questionable raids on suspected bombers, especially people he considered likely ‘reds.’ This caused many to fear that a police state was emerging.” Is the current flu scare (at this point, in North America, only that: a scare) something that could repeat, along with other mayhem?
From Associated Press: “It’s no longer just Republican vs. Democrat, or liberal vs. conservative. It’s the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent, rural vs. urban, white men against the world. Climate doubters clash with believers. Bathrooms have become battlefields, borders are battle lines. Sex and race, faith and ethnicity … the melting pot seems to be boiling over. ”
Item from the Washington Times:
“You’ve got Oregonians seeking to cascade into Idaho, Virginians who identify as West Virginians, Illinoians fighting to escape Chicago, Californians dreaming of starting a 51st state, and New Yorkers who think three states are better than one.
“Separation fever is sweeping the nation as quixotic but tenacious bands of frustrated rural dwellers, suburbanites and conservatives seek to break free from states with legislatures increasingly controlled by liberal big cities and metropolitan strongholds.”
And so it is that we come back to something we discussed years ago.
America is headed for dissolution. It is no longer “one nation under God.”
How can it be, when God has been taken out of the equation?
–MHB