We are now in difficult times which will likely escalate as the 2020 election year comes upon us. The divisions in our country today have been magnified since Donald Trump has become President. He has given permission to groups of ideologies of various discriminating groups to not only express themselves, but to do violence if they choose.

Apparently, making America great again means reverting to White Supremacy. In Irving Wallace’s book “The Man” written in the sixties, he fictionalizes a story about a Black American becoming president due to deaths of the president and vice president. Irving Wallace describes events very similar to the events happening today.

Today an angst appears that is so formidable that a solution to it could be extreme. Our times have become very different over the last ten years. Reactions come even more swiftly and occasionally without enough thought to be shared. These spontaneous thoughts are expressed as easily as a Tweet with results in seconds by millions of people. Can that be a good thing?

The preceding years to the American Revolution in 1860-1865 our country was divided by the slavery issue as well as other economic issues. Resulting with the southern states desire to secede from the northern states and some mid-western states. Today the approach to Black Americans having the vote is gerrymandering the voting system to keep Black Americans and other non white citizens from voting.

Abraham Lincoln may have couched our situation best during a speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield in 1838 when he explained that our destruction must come from among us and could not come from abroad. If our destruction occurs it must be from our own making. “As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.” His speech could be given today as it addresses so many of our current political situations as it seemed in 1838.

My point being, have we lost the ability to think for ourselves? Do we fact check more than one source before we formulate our hardened position? Do we review both sides of an issue before choosing one?

We all can do a better job of deciphering fact from fiction, of reality from bluster, and most of all truth from lies. Now is the time to pay attention.