Thank you, Mr. President, for dividing us

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 1/2/21

            C.S. Lewis, the atheist turned Christian, professor at Oxford and Cambridge, and author of great renown said it best. In his little book titled “The Great Divorce” Lewis argued that good and evil cannot co-exist. One or the other must win and will win.

            Lewis’ absolutism alarms many people today. Had he not died less than an hour before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the world would probably know him better. And if he were still living, Lewis would still be alarming us. Lewis believed in objective truth and acknowledged that truth is always narrow.

            “Life is not like a pool,” Lewis wrote, “but like a tree. It does not move toward unity but away from it. Evil cannot develop into good. Time does not heal it.”

            Ayn Rand, having endured evil Russian communism before coming to America, wrote the following in 1957: “When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing, when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods but in favors, you may know that your society is doomed.”

            Lewis and Rand, total opposites on matters of faith, were both dividers who forced clarity.

            Division is sometimes not only preferable but essential, if the good and right are to prevail. We juxtapose ideas during a political debate in order to compare them and then embrace one and discard the other. We acknowledge that more often than not, two cannot walk together except they be agreed.

            Rodney King, allegedly beaten badly by cops but continuing a life of petty crime until his death, famously said, “Why can’t we all just get along?” Today during the corona virus visitation, many are saying, “We’re in this together.”

Well, no we’re not. There’s little togetherness in America. Too much mixed information is tossed us. Too many commands are being given. Too many unelected bureaucrats are running the show, politicizing a pandemic. Our representative democracy, if not at stake, is surely being tested. If right wingers become violent, watch for the difference between the official response to them and the non- response to the leftists who rioted and even took over portions of cities.

            Division is often good, and there are several divisions that our current president brought about. His critics have aptly called him a divider and indeed his role as a divider has been well received. Apparently 74 million voters – practically half of the voters in the November election – approve of the role he assumed. Here are just three of those divisions.

            He divided the general populace and the news media. Not that the media was deeply loved by the populace in the first place, but for the most part we accepted the fact that news had become commentary and simply shook our heads in disgust. The president would not do this. He challenged media elites and actually jerked them around on a string, displaying their disdain for ordinary folks, particularly conservatives. Consequently most media personalities are consumed by Trump-hate. Consequently Americans are now taking “news” with a grain of salt.

            He divided nationalists and globalists. For decades many Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike have been globalists. Ignoring the needs of the vast middle class, they allowed jobs to spread abroad, not to heartland America. The very words, “America First,” scare them. Globalists ignored the fact that America’s heartland isn’t New York and Wall Street but Peoria and Main Street.

It’s interesting that a New York billionaire, recently named the most admired man in the country, spoke to and won the hearts of the heartland rather than trafficking in the rarified air of entities like the U.N., the World Health Organization and the World Bank. Globalists, who definitely include most of America’s corporate CEOs, like to keep the gravy train running, fueling it with cheap labor. (Guess what percentage of Walmart’s suppliers are in communist China.) Forget that globalism destroys national, homogenous cultures. Consumerism and moo-la, not borders, are what matter to globalists.

            The president also divided secular elites from religious commoners. Secular elites, having lost their minds, have given us post-birth abortion, white-shaming, emasculated cops, and “What gender do you prefer?” Conservatives are asking, “What in the world can be next?” And they’re ready to fight it. Such division is good. 

            Division is often the price we pay for needed correction. C.S. Lewis and Rand, like Patrick Henry, Churchill, Reagan, and other true lovers of freedom, simply believed there was a time for “Yea, yea” or “Nay, nay.”

            Georgia’s senatorial election is such a time. The socialism that Lewis and Rand have disdained and the President has fought is up for a vote.

 

Roger Hines

December 30, 2020