Thoughts from Dr. Joe: Traveling through a divided nation
If you read me last week, you’ll know that I wrote about my road trip to attend the 58th Presidential Inauguration in Washington, D.C.
Jan. 20 was incidental to the greater quest of travel, the antithesis of narrow-mindedness. Broad wholesome views of people, places and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in front of a television or skimming through Facebook posts. Being on the road, one is closer to the wild heart of life. Thus, instead of thinking how things may be, we see them as they are.
We’re on the road again heading back to California, taking a more northerly route. The weather is fair to middlin’, and that’s pretty good for the dead of winter. But if the rains persist and the temperature drops, conditions could quickly turn south. We went through the coal and rail towns of Western Pennsylvania, the farmlands of Ohio, and into the bleak interior of Chicago. You didn’t ask, but it’s my opinion Chicago deep-dish pizza has nothing over New York’s thin slice.
Springfield, the land of Lincoln and the capitol of Illinois, was a great experience and brought the adventure full circle. In 1861 the political climate in America was abysmal. Although at the time the president-elect barely reached the necessary majority, his election was fair and, surprisingly, it was not manipulated by the Russians. President Abraham Lincoln was vilified, and hideous caricatures of his liking filled the nation’s newspapers. The Republican from the state of Illinois split the ideological center of the United States; subsequently, seven states from the south seceded from the Union. Lincoln’s inauguration set the stage for the bloodiest war in American history.
History is cyclical. Although 150 years separates the current state of affairs from the calamity of the Civil War, America is currently in an ideological Civil War. For the past two weeks, I’ve traveled the blue highways of America and I have learned firsthand that we are a divided nation. The interior of America does not mirror its left and right coasts. Diversity’s parameters supersede ethnicity, race and creed.
I’ve stood on the ground where Lincoln spoke the most profound 274 words in our country’s history, the Gettysburg Address. “Now we are involved in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”
In 1858 he accepted the Republican nomination for the Illinois Senate and warned the country that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was speaking of the chasm between the free and slave states.
Similarly, we are as polarized today. Since the Vietnam War, we have not seen such an acrimonious political climate.
I spoke to a park ranger and historian named Cassidy at the Lincoln home in Springfield. She explained how Lincoln ascended from living in a tiny cabin to the White House. Cassidy said that by becoming president, Lincoln hoped to forge a path that would enable anyone to materialize a dream.
Perhaps that’s what we all want, regardless of our innate divide.
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JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.
