Things Fall Apart

We live in an age of misunderstanding, distrust, and animosity. How are we going to get along with each other in the world if we have the same conflicts with our next-door neighbor?  

We are as divided as no time that I can ever remember. Politically and religious differences were always there. But in the 1950s, it seemed to start to unravel. First, by 1964, we had race riots and then anti-war protests. This chaos all seemed to culminate in 68 (hey, that rhymes; it could be a slogan) with the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Then it blew up at the democratic convention. 

The summer of  69' took the heat of things for a while. Maybe the race to the moon and Woodstock unified us somewhat. That didn't last long. It seemed we settled down a little for the next 30 years: no significant upheavals and the like. Things were not smooth, but it wasn't quite the wild rollercoaster ride. The boomers were too preoccupied with growing up. 

Then 9/11 hit at the beginning of the new millennium. Again, the U.S. had a common enemy. They were the Dixie Chicks and Sadam Hussain. Even those two mentioned had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks (a good misdirection always quiets the masses). 

Lately, Trump has helped call attention to the great divide we formed. President Obama had little interest in uniting us; he only agitated the divide and used it to his advantage. He learned from the feat of his masters, Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky. 

Now we are at polar opposites, and no compromise seems possible. The middle has eroded, and things are going to boil over. We can't agree on basics like what is a life, what is a person's sex, and what is a pandemic. 

I took the blog title from the novel Things Fall Apart One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus! Revelation 22:20.