The title refers to a military tactic. If you want the upper hand in a battle, you divide the enemy, militarily or culturally. We have become a nation, thanks to an election and a pandemic, that is ideologically divided. My question is, are we willing to work on a repair or will we accept being divided and conquered?

Over the past decade, our government has become fractured. As of the last several years, it has been reduced to you are a conservative or you are a liberal. The result of this fracturing is a two party system that for the most part does not represent the general population that elected them and at the very least has become an ineffective governing body. Now some may argue that Congress still passes legislation, but the legislation is along party and unfortunately, money lines. The art of compromise for the good of the nation seems absent.

Meanwhile, we as citizens and voters, are becoming polarized. Thanks to social media, we get our news from everywhere and anywhere and we feel free to verbalize our opinions as beliefs we expect others to adopt. We are losing our civility at a time when it is needed more than ever. The pandemic taught us what isolation felt like. Some embraced it while others grew angry, looking for someone to blame. The election embroiled us in a nasty national conversation, further fueling our anger and grief. The end result, is a division that grows wider with each angry social media confrontation and every too hastily shared meme or post. We are divided and ready to be conquered. In this battle, the enemy is not always obvious, not even some other country or ideology. The enemy is us. How wide do we leave this division grow before the distance between is too far to ever cross.

We must get back to spending more time listening TO each other than the amount of time we spend talking AT each other. The vast majority of Americans are not simply one side or the other. We hold some beliefs that are conservative while we hold others that are liberal. The truth is we are moderates caught in a struggle to make us one or the other, leaving us no ground in the middle. But the solution is simple, we begin to listen. We get back to respecting our differences. We stop claiming that everything is political. It is only political when we use arguing our causes as an excuse for not listening. Politicians make issues political, we do not have to. I fear that if we leave party politicians to steer us, we will not be able to get back to any kind of normal.

Let’s put the election behind us. Let’s leave the pandemic to history. Let’s get back to civilized discussions about what comes next and what positive role we can play. We must seek to choose leaders at all levels, who recognize the need for rational discussions on what they as leaders and we as a people can do to solve the litany of problems that face our nation. We must make our decisions based on humanity and not politics. Choose to listen for our commonalities so that we can respect our differences. Let us choose unified and stronger over divided and conquered.