America: The We Society and Thinking of Others First

We versus Me. Ours versus Mine. Sounds like two kids fighting, doesn't it? It also sounds like America's collective mindset as it moves into another Election. Sometimes I think our country resembles the families on the television show Super Nanny. Families that cannot spend time together, play together, do chores, or even share rooms together. It takes the wit and will of an imported nanny to swoop in to save such families from falling in on themselves. Thanks to Super Nanny's guidance, the family ultimately becomes a working unit where chores, toys, and rooms are shared. Well, at least up until the closing credits roll.

Responsibility, sharing, respect, getting along. If Super Nanny can turn a family around to accept those basic tenets of human goodness then what is America's collective problem in trying to want or do the same?

Maybe we need to ask ourselves to define what a country is. I would say that a country is a collection of people glued together by geography and leadership. Should a country be anything more? If not, then let's just tell those neighbors whom we know only through tragic Associated Press clippings to go screw themselves. Out of sight, out of mind.

But we don't do that. Think of Katrina, Apollo, 9/11, Pearl Harbor- these events tugged at our hearts, all of them whether you lived in New Orleans, New York City, Cape Canaveral, or Hawaii. But what about an ordinary day, when the sky is just blue, the birds are merely chirping, and the masses are out working? We fight about gays and guns, socialized medicine, abortion, morals, hockey moms.

A co-worker once asked me: How many more raises are you away from being a Republican? I laughed but knew exactly what he meant. There, in the cozy confines of our office, was a fishbowl of relative wealth and little need for any government programs that interfered with the pursuit of our next major purchase. Besides, the "mighty office-worker" was, as usual, bankrolling all these losers that use social programs for which we will ominously never have a use.

And that breaks my heart. The government will never spend my money the way that I see fit. And neither will it yours. But one thing that we can all demand is decency and dignity for us all, which is something that should be worth owning by each of us- or all of us.