Is “A Perfect Union” Only a Dream for America?
I sat and watched television last night and listened as the Republican candidates put each other down and put President Obama down and I thought to myself “It’s so sad that we’re living through a time in our nation that so much hate is going around. I dreamed for a moment about what it would be like if we could get along better and our government; our congress and our president could work together for a more “perfect union”.
I was also looking forward toward President’s Obama’s third State of the Union Address that he’ll be making tonight and knowing that no matter what he says, the other side will oppose him and we can count on a year of partisan politics as usual.
Some members of our Congress have agreed to sit together tonight in a show of at least a desire to work together but we all know that is only a pipe dream that just won’t happen; and that’s just too bad.
What divides us so much is that we can’t find any common ground? Why is it that we Americans can’t see past our differences and compromise? Why do we constantly demonize each other and refuse to even consider what the other side wants and why they want it?
Let’s start with some of the issues that divide us the most. Abortion comes to mind. Truth is, I bet if you ask a lot of Democrats how they feel about abortion, you’ll find that many of them detest the very thought of it. Most Democrats don’t like the idea of destroying a life but they hate even more the idea of forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn’t want to do. We feel our bodies are our own and no one has the right to force us to do anything with them, including carrying a child full term.
What upsets many liberals including myself is the hypocrisy of the pro-life movement. When I know there are so many hundreds of thousands of hungry children dying in third world countries because of lack of food and here we have those who would protest in this country about children who aren’t even born yet. I say, take care of the children who are here already, no matter where they come from and then we’ll talk about unborn children.
On top of that, once children are born, even in this country, the pro-lifers suddenly have no interest in the child’s life, instead the party they belong to doesn’t want tax dollars to go to feeding them or providing for their needs; instead they’d rather use that money to give lower taxes to huge corporations. So yes, let’s stop abortion, as soon as we manage to feed all the hungry children in this world.
Another issue that seems to divide us is the inequality between the rich and the poor. For the last thirty years we’ve been told by Republicans that if we will take care of the job creators by lowering their taxes and deregulating the rules so that they have more freedom to make money, we’ll all be seeing prosperity. The problem with that, my conservative friends, is that it hasn’t happened yet after thirty years of trickle-down economics.
We stood back and allowed taxes to be lowered on the wealthy and regulations cut back on huge corporations, only to see the working middle class lose out as far as prosperity. Yet we’re being told that because the mere threat of raising the “Job Creators” taxes makes them uncertain about the future and so that’s the reason why they’re not creating jobs. Their taxes are already lower than they’ve ever been and yet it isn’t enough. I have to ask “Do they need yet another thirty years of low taxes before the middle class finally get a piece of the pie?”
Tonight our president is going to again go before a joint session of Congress and ask for bipartisanship and he’ll again get vitriol and hateful rhetoric for even asking. He’ll continue to be blamed for everything; the high jobless rate, even though he’s offered them a jobs program that they flatly turned him down on; high taxes even though they’re lower than they’ve ever been; and blamed for an unwillingness to work with Republicans even though he’s compromised and compromised with them as they continued to say “no” to everything that he has proposed.
A more perfect union starts when both sides of our political spectrum begin to try to understand where the other side is coming from and looks for a way to compromise, not simply say “no” to everything. Yes, a perfect union is only a dream that can’t come true because our politicians play up to the hate and discourse that comes from the extreme elements of their parties.
Our perfect union is only a dream because big corporations and special interests throws money at our elected leaders to bribe them which means that the interest of the American people as a whole is left ignored and on the cutting floor of our Congress; money speaks and the good of the nation falls into the gutter.
Let’s just keep dreaming, it won’t get us anywhere but dreams are all we have when the people we elect to represent us, only represents the highest bidder and listen only to hateful extremism from the far sides of their party and refuses to even compromise. Dreams won’t solve our problems, but neither will the same old partisanship we’ve had so far.
Related articles
- The Republican Party: the Party of God and Money (fidlerten.com)
- Dale Glading: Short-term compromise often necessary, but there’s never room for demonization of political opponents; Congress must learn to work together (tcpalm.com)
- Obama to take on economy in State of the Union (charlotte.news14.com)
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