The Concept of Unification

I saw a headline on Yahoo that asked if Obama had united or divided the parties in Washington. I thought this was a unique question. Certainly a timely one too. In giving this query some thought, I didn’t even read the article. I decided to come to my own conclusion about it. I don’t usually buy into everything I read anyway and I don’t like feeling that I’m being told how to think or act. Making up our own minds is always the best.

So…has Obama united or divided the parties? My answer is that he’s done exactly what I expected him to do, and so has everybody else in Washington. The Republicans keep snarking and whining while the Obama administration just presses right on with the business at hand. I didn’t think things would be any other way than this. I find it even amusing to a degree that the Republicans are complaining about a lack of partisanship when they showed nothing of the sort before last January. Everything the Obama administration has proposed has been fought bitterly by the Republicans in Congress and they act as if they’ve been wronged in some fashion.

I think that the Republican party feels it has been wronged. By everyone. Their countrymen and their colleagues and even their own families in some cases. Everywhere you look people are being arrested for money laundering schemes and embezzlement and so on and so forth. Most of these people are the wealthiest of the wealthy to boot. Dyed in the wool Republicans who spent their entire lives making fortunes and supporting the establishment that served them best. Now the tables have turned. The Republicans aren’t in control anymore. Times are changing. People are changing. Laws are being interpreted the way they were meant to be interpreted and there is a great portion of the population who cannot imagine a country where everyone doesn’t have a role and a mold to fit into. They can’t envision a world in which everyone enjoys the same freedoms. So yes, I feel that our right wing brethren are reeling from all that is going on.

And while they’re grappling to stay afloat in spite of their own party members, President Obama is moving ahead with the agenda he has set for himself. One that includes pulling our country out of this economic crisis and ending the conflict in the Middle East and rectifying our image to the rest of the world. He doesn’t want other nations to see America as a land of bullies where only the strong prosper and survive. He also wants people to reach out to each other and be something other than Republicans and Democrats. He wants us to be Americans.

This is doing little to unify us because of the points I have already laid out. Democrats are embracing the very things that Republicans are trying to shut down. As can be expected. These two parties have long stood for polar opposite dynamics and for there to be a change in the acceptance of each other in a few months just isn’t going to happen. It wouldn’t even happen in a few years or a few decades. Things like the changes we are now seeing take place over long periods of time in which older generations and what they stand for have to fade into the mists of time and eventually be recalled only by historians.

So is President Obama unifying or dividing? Well, I don’t think it should be expected of him to do either one. He can’t unify people with vastly different backgrounds in thought. He can’t divide what is already divided either. The most he can do is what we elected him to do. And that is lead this nation into a better future. He probably doesn’t hope to do anymore than he is already doing. His goals and focuses right now are on larger topics than the differences between political parties and people in general. I wouldn’t be up to taking on his job unless I was forced to and anyone who has the guts to run for an office like President of the United States of America is in a class of elite individuals anyway. Not everyone is cut out for it.

Personally, my aims in this uncertain time are to keep myself going on the current road I’m travelling and to maintain my lifestyle in the manner of which I am accustomed. I plan to do my part at being a good steward of my resources and my world, and I want to strive to be better all the time too. It is my belief that all Americans should be focusing on bettering ourselves and relying on what we each have to offer to pull ourselves as well as our country through to the light at the end of the tunnel.

I think we should let Obama off the hook on the unification standpoint because he can only do what we as his constituents allow him to accomplish and unifying ourselves has to start with the people in general. People like you and me. Neighbors who need to accept each other for who we are and not put one another down because of differing religions and lifestyles and choices. Nobody has the right to push their ideals on anyone else and this is something that mankind has had a tough time with since we began our history on this planet.

But it has to start somewhere and with somebody. Our generation is the one poised on the brink of the future and the future always unfolds on a path of its own. We cannot change who we are but we can change where we’re going. And the road is long and bumpy. Just like it always has been. I’d say hold on and hunker down because the next few decades are likely to be the most tumultuous time in our evolution.

And that is my sole focus for today.