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There is a river of anger flowing across the United States, and those of us on both shores are drinking its water. It is defining who we are and shaping our relationships. No one is making us drink from this river, but we do it anyway. We are poisoning ourselves. Creating battle lines. As someone who has served America in uniform, I fear for our future.
We are a nation of human beings, so of course we disagree about stuff. But this is not that; this isn’t disagreement. We’re not talking to one another, we’re not listening to one another. We’re not even arguing. We’re just shouting. Or worse, we’re not relating at all. I cannot remember ever using the term Antichrist (except perhaps in a crossword puzzle), but I wonder if this horrible river is somehow not that. An unnatural phenomenon manifesting itself among us, turning our shared values to provocation, our reason to anger, our common sense to hatred, our peace to chaos. A virus from hell.
I miss our healthy America, arm wrestling over politics, and then sharing a beer. Am I overreacting? I hope so. I am an old man, and so maybe wrong. But if it’s a virus — medical or mystical or metaphysical or whatever — we need a vaccine. Maybe what we need is for God to grab each of us by the ears, and shake us. Surely he is watching us and wondering, “What the hell has gotten into them?”
Stefan Nadzo
Eastbrook
