Us & Them

Seems to me that the battle lines are drawn in all circumstances.

There are fights about religion, politics, sports and just about everything else that you can possibly think of.

And a whole lot of people are in a constant rage.

“Did you hear what they are doing?” A guy said to me.

That’s always my favorite.

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.

“Liberals! They don’t want people to eat meat.”

“That’s not happening,” I said. “So, try and enjoy your day.”

“They’re trying to take our guns!”

They aren’t. 

They are trying to keep guns away from guys like the dude who broke into a party and killed six people in Colorado Springs yesterday.

That’s what ‘they are trying to do.

And the fights aren’t just kept to red versus blue.

Your sports team cheats. Mine doesn’t.

The rich has taught the middle to hate the poor.

The poor hate the rich.

The rich hates them all.

We have black versus white and white versus black and it seems to me that no one is happy unless they’re miserable.

And maybe that’s what we need to survive when we feel cheated by the circumstances of our own lives.

We watched a movie the other night that theorized that Americans need someone to hate.

We had a long-term enemy in the Russians during the Cold War years.

Then we switched our hate to the damn Arabs or Muslims.

Immigrants became enemy number one as a simple argument was offered to solve a highly complex problem.

“Deport them all!”

“Wipe them off the map!”

And crazily enough now the group that half of Americans hate are…

…other Americans!

It’s an absolute war at this point.

And the more uncomfortable that people become with their own standing in life the more they lash out at whoever they perceive as an enemy.

“Your idiotic governor is proposing…

…the liberals don’t want to work!

…the rednecks are dumb!

It truly doesn’t matter what is true or not true anymore.

The sides are drawn.

It’s ‘Us against Them’

I’ve been laughing about it in sports for years. Watch a guy hit a game-winner in the NBA. He acts like he’s mad!

When a team wins a title they automatically begin the celebration by saying, “No one believed in us, but us! We proved everyone wrong!”

Guys who are drafted later than they think are already angry.

“I’ll play with a chip on my shoulder!”

All perceived enemies thought up to motivate.

Two separate things happened to me during my happy golfing hours.

Last week, we were in our cart going across a bridge when two golfers on foot ambled by.

“Hey guys,” I said. “How’s it going?”

Both men looked and neither responded!

Just kept walking!!

Then, this week, on the way to the course, I was stopped at a red light. An older couple with a small dog was in the car beside me.

I smiled at the woman who was holding the dog. She waved at me. I waved back. Then her husband waved.

The light turned green and I headed off. All three of us were smiling.

There are people out there who love each other fighting over thoughts about their perceived enemies.

“Oh my God! You’re a Trumper?”

“You’re a liberal???”

Us Versus Them!

Just as ‘they’ want it.

Such a damn waste of time.

And Americans hating Americans over it?

Ridiculous!