Conflict remains a holiday tradition

In hindsight, the delicate hope that this Thanksgiving weekend would be absent conflict was misplaced, gripped so tightly it never had a realistic chance at manifesting.

After all, it’s said, past is prelude. Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice yadda, yadda, yadda.

So, I should have left Pollyanna at home. I should have approached the annual family holiday gatherings with the same sort of guardedness and caution I had employed most of my adult life. But I didn’t. Shame on me.

I should have known better.

I have been a political and socially sentient being for long enough to know that their are differences among us and some, while they may not be too big too hurdle they are of such size that it would take a lifetime to scale.

Cliches are cliches for a reason and one of the most often repeated these days is that we are a country divided and the gap is widening. It’s not just the country, but families as well.

The obvious fissure is the political one. There was a time when political houses, literal and figurative, were divided solely because of differences of philosophy.

But the differences on immigration, for example, have become so stark that politics have become blood sport.

When one side sees the separation of families through extra judicial arrests and deportation without due process as a simple enforcement of law while the other sees it as a fundamental violation of the United States Constitution and human rights, then differences are sure to be heated. It’s no longer enough to make your case and hope the other side understands the error of their ways. It is now all or nothing and many times we, as a family and a country, are left not speaking to one another and no longer seeking common ground and a way to move forward.

The political climate and the economic frustrations we face on the national and personal level affect us all deeply and leave us on edge as we struggle to make sense of the world and wonder if we will ever be OK, again.

And yet, knowing these are precarious times and we are all on edge I couldn’t help but ask a question I should have known better than to ask. We are still, I regret, a country in conflict.

Is “Die Hard” a Christmas movie? (Absolutely not)