Discouraged, but not without hope

Sometimes it gets difficult to remain positive in our world of today. After all, there are many wars going on, we're on the tail end of a recession that has decimated the financial well-being of millions of people (ours included), many people have lost their jobs and many more continue to do so, our education system is taking hit after hit by losing money and good teachers and raising class sizes, and our newscasts are filled with reports of crime and tragedy and death and destruction.

But of all these things, I think that what is most discouraging to me is the way that we treat each other, especially here in the states. One of the things that always has been a hallmark of America is the fact that when times have gotten tough, we've stuck together. We've come together as a united people and we've worked our ways through our difficulties, overcoming obstacles and trials together.

Not this time, though. It's unfortunate, but I've never been witness to such incredibly uncivil treatment as that which I've seen over the last few years, especially in the political arena. I've never seen so many people filled with hatred and anger of others simply because of religion, politics, national origin, or race.

And what's worse, I've never seen the leaders of this country involved in such petty bickering and such mean-spirited attacks on each other.

Their modeling is encouraging many of the people who admire them to do the same thing, and the polarization of our politics has become dangerous, as people vent their anger and their own frustrations of their own lives on the right or the left, the conservatives or the liberals, the "republitards" or the "libtards." It's all about name-calling, insulting, and trying to harm those who don't hold the same beliefs that we hold, and that's simply sad.

A country must be run on cooperation if it's to function well. Unfortunately, though, we have very few role models who model cooperation to our young today--now things seem to be all about competition, and it frightens me to think of how these young people will end up twenty years from now if they're not exposed to healthy models of cooperation.