America has become a hyphen nation. A nation of people who identify themselves as something hyphen American. "African-American"; "Conservative-American"; "Liberal-American"; and many others. People love to let others know where they stand, and with whom they stand. However, they seem to identify more with the label ahead of the hyphen, rather than what comes after.
Many people tend to identify with their group, their label rather than identify with being an American, a citizen of the United States. This is something that keeps us, as a people, divided against one another. There are even people who think that those who are not a member of their little pre-hyphen clique are "not real Americans". Because they don't think the same as they do, and believe in the same solutions, and goals, their opinions, and suggestions have no merit, or place in their idea of American culture. There are people who would go so far as to attempt to rewrite history as to make their little clique the founders, and heroes of America, rather than show the people as they actually were, from their own words from their writings, and their own actions, as evidenced by history.
Why have we become so enamored with the idea of the Us vs. Them mentality? True, it's nice to belong, and have like-minded people around us, but We The People should only have one side, when it comes to political matters. And that side is the side of The United States of America, not a person's political party, political ideology, race, religion, orientation, gender, or ancestry. When it comes to the direction our country is going, we should concentrate on what Unites us, not what Divides us. United, we should be standing. But since we are so Divided, we have fallen, and fallen hard.
No matter what our political ideology, political party, race, religion, orientation, gender, or ancestry, we are ALL Americans. It just seems that there are a lot of people who have forgotten this.
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