Divided

Let's temporarily return to the gun violence issue.  Nearly everyone wants to reduce the amount of gun violence in our society.  I would say everyone, but there are people who are members of the Flat Earth Society;  who think the earth is only 4000 years old;  and who believe that JFK and Elvis are living in a senior citizen community in rural Mississippi, which actually was a movie called Bubba Ho-Tep with Ossie Davis as JFK and Bruce Campbell as Elvis.  I highly recommend it.  Yes, I know Ossie Davis was black and JFK was not, but that's one of the interesting concepts in the movie.

The point is that even nearly all NRA members do not want to see mass shootings of innocent people.  A survey of gun owners has shown that a majority of them are not opposed to some form of firearms restrictions, while it seems that the leaders of the NRA do oppose any restrictions.  So what is to be made of this conflicting information in which the members of an organization disagree with their leaders?  Perhaps it is not that unusual.  People elect leaders with whom they rarely completely agree.

It seems that as a society, as a country of people with a variety of political, religious, and other beliefs, we cannot agree that we have common points of agreement.  Why not?  Is it the ideological division existing in our society that we cannot acknowledge our common ground?  Have we always had this problem?  I don't think so, but...

Today, we have a new method of spreading misinformation--the Internet.  Instead of looking through windows and seeing the world that we live in with all its faults and failures, we can look into our mirror and immediately see others who have the same beliefs we have, and it reinforces our own preconceptions.  We don't have to even look at the window, let alone through it.  We don't want to.  If we do, we may see changes we dislike--and fear.  Demographic changes that we feel threaten our "way of life."  Our superior at the factory who is Latino.  The police officer who is a woman.  The President who's father was not white.

Obviously what I am talking about here is an American tradition--bigotry.  Ku Klux Klan, Asian exclusion laws, the Irish need-not-apply, John Jay.  What?  John Jay, one of the "Founding Fathers" of the USA, the 1st Chief Justice, President of the Continental Congress, one of the writers of the Federalist Papers, Governor of New York who tried to abolish slavery was a bigot???  Well, yes, he was.  He tried to include a provision in the New York State constitution barring Catholics from owning property and having the right to vote.  Why?  Because of their false, wicked, and dangerous beliefs.  The same reason the members of the John Birch Society opposed JFK.  The same John Birch Society founded by, among others, Fred Koch, the father of the present infamous Koch Brothers who are spending their fortune opposing President Obama.

But I have really digressed.  Almost everyone wants to reduce gun violence, but since we refuse to speak to one another, hide in our favorite Internet sites, solely watch our favorite slanted cable channels, we don't even know that we agree to reduce the number of our relatives, friends, and neighbors who are going to be killed by guns.  We don't even know.