There Is No Them- There’s Only Us

After what seemed like an eternity of campaigning and waiting, we finally have a decision in the presidential election. And no matter how you feel about that, there is one thing I hope we will all remember:

There is no “them”. There’s only us.

I hope this thought is at the forefront of all our minds. I hope we realize that what we do to those on the “other side”, we also do to ourselves. Gloating and “in-your-face” celebrating won’t help us move forward. Neither will refusal to concede, lose gracefully or stop blaming.

“Them” can be our constant but useless adversary and scapegoat. But “them” is part of “us”, making any conflict an internal one, whether our struggle is within our national borders or with our brothers and sisters across the globe.

Whether we like each other as a people or not, we all need each other. Our problems aren’t going away just because we elected a new president, we’re going to have to work them through to solution.

That doesn’t happen if there is a “them” to identify, constantly demonize, blame and fight. It might happen if we treat each other as members of the same team.

Bill Maher compares our country to a family whose members can’t stand each other, yet would never resort to violence. No matter what they do or fight about, there is never a “them”, only an us. Watch the first 3 minutes of Maher’s video- it’s opinionated as you would expect from him, but his points are valid. WARNING: there’s some foul language.

And for music fans, here’s a rather obscure tune from funk legend Rick James, making the same call as this writing.

I won’t ramble on. You get the idea, and there are millions of election related media bits awaiting your attention. But I do really hope that we can start putting the pieces of our cultural relationships back together, and improving those that were never good in the first place.

There is no “them”. There is only us.

It may sound trite, but it’s the only way we move forward.

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