One may ideologically divide Americans into two groups: the radical left and the radical right. Very few would be excluded. The radical left says that the country is rotten to the core and is in need of a revolution. This is an indication of depression, hopelessness and guilt over the failure of values they cherish. The radical right says the country is rotten to the core and needs more walls, more police; this keeps others from emigrating to take possession of what its citizenry has worked so hard to obtain. What is felt in this instance is projected outward to those who they believe threaten them. Both sides can be thought of as “dug in” and potentially totalitarian.
Our politics is only a symptom of personal frustration in the extreme. At the heart of our problem is a “theological” issue. The fear and confusion that we feel to rid ourselves of opposites (our need to believe in binary choices) is a God-given signal to our personal survival system, they are not signs of rottenness. Living with ambiguity is necessary for our well-being. Like it or not we are bound together; this is the root of what the word religion means (ligio=ligament). We have no recourse whatsoever except to assume this faith assumption. Some believe it to be absurd. We must, however, base our lives on this belief as did such citizens as Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.
Everyone born into this world has value, can love, can build, and can share; everyone is capable of so much more than the expressions of “rottenness” that our society now accepts as the norm.
The Rev. FREDERICK STECKER
New London