Guest AuthorNothing like the juxtaposition of the split-rail fences of the Manassas battlefields and the sprawl of suburban D.C. to remind one that Americans are willing to kill each other to make a point.
A family wedding took me away from Key West recently. I flew to Washington, D.C. and then drove a rental car through the Civil War battlefields — or War of Northern Aggression, depending on one’s preferred American history book.
Americans haven’t changed much in the 150 years since General Robert E. Lee ’s Appomattox surrender in April 1864, ending a four-year kill-a-thon that destroyed at least three generations and scared our collective psyche in ways we still haven’t understood.
American intransigence in the 1860s kept us from finding a collaborative path to do the right things without picking up guns. Unless we call a halt to American intransigence 2014 model, we will find ourselves once again killing to make a point.
There are fundamental similarities between the heels-dug-in culture of 1860 and today.
- The economic, cultural and educational disparities between the haves and have-nots put most Americans far below the power-wielding top 10 percent.
- The visceral fear of losing “mine” pits color, culture, religion and economics against each other. “We” — by whatever definition one selects — want to stay on top at whatever the cost.
- The libertarian “don’t tread on me” isolation mistakenly revels in believing one can go it alone, the government and good-for-the-group be damned.
- The calls to Christianity and preservation of “traditional family values” become the code words for “if you don’t believe as I do, don’t look as I do, don’t do as I do, then you are dead wrong.”
- The gathering storm of sheer pigheadedness results in scorched-earth decisions that shut down government, shatter collaborative ventures that do good for the group and celebrate as heroes those who stand their ground on false principles and unenlightened rhetoric.
Americans are once again at the crisis catalyst. We can follow the split-rail fences along Virginia’s Lee Highway straight into a killing field or we can find a path to do what’s right without bloodshed.
I’d like to think we can dispense with the “I’ve got mine,” isolationist, secession fear of change that drove us into the War Between the States. I fear we will not.
Linda Grist Cunningham is proprietor of KeyWestWatch Media, a project management company in Key West. A journalist, executive editor and editorial page editor for more than 40 years, she moved to Key West in 2012. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
