Americans

Rachel Maddow gives a lesson in messaging in 30 seconds.

Hoover Dam speak for itself.

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

While it's good to think that bringing us all together here in America would be a great and wonderful enterprise, it wouldn't make any sense to bring us together in an undifferentiated horde. By undifferentiated, I mean that we do have differences to overcome and those differences are as wide as the Grand Canyon at times. Yet, there has to be something, some reason or a situation that could part the great divide and allow us to see eye to eye on a particular subject or state of affairs.

What might that look like in 2009? What would it take to pull it off?

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Let me answer the second question first. Education. Pure and simple.

Back to the first question.

On May 7th I read an associated Press release on my Yahoo internet sight. I could not believe what I was reading. I am now sure that we have now, knowingly and willing, entered the Iraqi Civil war squarely on the side of the Shia Majority who have, since our arrival in Iraq, terrorized the Sunni Minority who, during the reign of Saddam, lorded power over the Shia and insured they suffered considerably.

We are now, effectively, allies with the Shia in Iraq in their civil war with the Sunni Muslims.

The title of an article by Bill Moyers, correctly claiming that our government today is far from the government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, that Lincoln envisioned.

The focus of the government that Lincoln imagined was that it exists to serve the common good. Legislators are elected, not appointed, thereby holding them accountable to “the people”.

How did we get here?