A 2020 Declaration of Belief

Now is the time that we, the People of the United States of America, call out the cancer that is spreading through this nation. It is the cancer of political polarization, and it is the central reason why, as a nation, we are not headed in the right direction. As hostile marriages are bad for children, the bitter and divisive relations between the Democratic and Republican Parties are bad for all Americans and for the future of this great nation.

Tensions between Democratic and Republican visions, like different parenting styles of mothers and fathers, are natural and good. They are the Yin and Yang of government ideologies, and strengths in one complement weaknesses in the other. We the People should seek to harmonize the tensions because when harmonized the two visions create a holistic balance that allows for a healthy, stable structure for its citizens.

Instead of recognizing their mutual and necessary interdependence, the two parties have become bitter rivals, righteously convinced of their own legitimacy and equally convinced of the illegitimacy of the other. Embroiled in a vicious, tangled marriage of no trust and no respect, there is no longer a vision of the harmony of the whole through balance, but instead only a desire for victory and vindication.

This is the source of the growing frustration and even rage against the broken US government that has been so clearly visible this election year from both the Left and the Right. But, as we sympathize with these movements, we, the People, must also recognize that there can be no single party victory and vindication, for such only ends with a catastrophic tearing at the very fabric of our society.

There is no one ideology or identity that makes America great. The American people ARE liberal professors, working class Evangelical Whites, Black Lives Matter protestors, cops on the beat, naturalized immigrants, investment bankers, elementary school teachers, proud veterans and on and on. We will be an exceptional nation only to the extent that we can harmonize this rainbow of diversity into the shining light that is the American ideal.

Let us then proclaim a 2020 Declaration of Belief.

We, the People of the United States of America, see clearly that this election is a symptom of the cancer of political polarization that is eating away at core of our country. And because our government is of the People, for the People, by the People, we, collectively, are both the cancer and the cure. The time is now to transcend the idea that the Democratic and Republican parties are there for victory and vindication and the destruction of the other. Instead, going forward we will see the Democratic and Republican ideologies as systems of thought that exist in complementary relation to one another and that American greatness emerges only when these ideological tensions are harmonized to foster the rise of our collective whole.

Source: Gregg Henriques/Wiki