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Every wedding day is filled with eager hopes for "happily ever after." Unfortunately, we know it often doesn't work out that way. Some long-married couples are still as in love as the day they were wed, but for many others, they are friends who "do life" together in a generally cordial but far from passionate way.
That may not be the Disney ideal but it's far from an awful life, especially considering where else a troubled marriage can lead. The next step down would be separate bedrooms, where the couple still shares the house but as little of their life as they can afford to. They may appear together at public functions and for holidays, like old-time European nobility, but the rest of the time, they nod politely as they pass each other in the hallway.
And then, there are those marriages which are in a state of homicidal open war, as depicted in The War of the Roses and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Even the most devoutly religious person would reluctantly recommend reaching for a lawyer instead of a shotgun if those are the only two workable alternatives.
America, like most marriages, has had periods of internal strife as well as times of sweet accord. Sadly, we've also had times of grievous abuse, with the wickedness of slavery and then Jim Crow. The Civil War brought us very close to a permanent split, but it turned out that, ultimately, we had more in common than we might have thought. Today's Americans are richer, more comfortable, more secure, and in most ways better off than ever before.
Yet it seems we hate each other more than at any time since the
1860s.
Who would be cold-blooded enough to savage hurricane victims? Rabid sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
Is this how civil wars start? Because it sure feels like it could be. I can't imagine the kind of hate that is harbored in a heart that wishes for half of their countrymen to die violently.
This solidifies to those of us over here, praying and calling friends and watching the hurricane path with horror, that we don't have anything in common with them anymore.
As ghastly as it is to imagine, there's abundant evidence of the author's point: Twitter, and even the mainstream media, were filled with despicable cheering for the hurricanes to destroy the lives of Trump voters in the South.
It's bad enough to wish someone dead from a national disaster; it's even worse to do as Hayley Geftman-Gold did after the recent Las Vegas horror massacre at a music concert:
I’m actually not even sympathetic [because] country music fans often are Republican gun toters.
Her views were so repugnant that even her arch-leftist employer, CBS News, immediately sacked her. Unfortunately, as (now ex-) senior counsel she must be a member of the New York State bar; we've not yet heard that she been disbarred for such an odious violation of anything resembling legal ethics, so no doubt she'll shortly parachute into an equally profitable albeit less visible gig at a sympathetic left-wing organization.
It's become commonplace to refer to "the cold civil war" between our leftist totalitarian elites and their diversity clients on the one hand, and Americans of a more traditional bent on the other. This is similar to the "separate bedrooms" phase of a dying marriage, where the two don't like each other, stay as far from each other as they can, but refrain from open war.
We still haven't reached the point of open war, aside from the occasional loner like left-wing activist James Hodgkinson who carefully sought out the Republican Congressional baseball team to commit attempted murder. But verbally wishing the other side dead - not converted, not even somewhere else, but just plain dead - is a large and momentous step in that direction.
It's very sad when, in the heat of an argument, one spouse tells the other "I wish I'd never married you. I want a divorce." Just saying it out loud is devastating, and can be life-changing in a very bad way.
It's far worse when one spouse says, "I wish you were dead." From that perspective, an orderly divorce begins to look a lot more attractive - horrible as it is, particularly for the children, it's merely life changing, it's not literally life ending.
Is the time arriving when those will be the two choices presenting the United States - a grumpy but orderly divorce, or a murderous no-holds-barred fight that leaves nothing of the family fortune but scorched earth?
The left needs to urgently rethink through the dire implications of what they are doing, and maybe even apply some of their own stereotypes. After all, in their worldview, who has all the guns?