A Sad State of Affairs

Never have I felt more divisiveness in the United States than I do today. I have actually begun to withdraw from any social interaction because of the hostile atmosphere I find in American society. It seems that in today's United States, the people are so sharply divided into leftist and rightist groups, and the animosity between those groups is so severe that the nation is like a tinderbox. Perhaps I am misunderstanding things, but I have perceived incredibly severe behavior, and I can only feel alarmed.

It seems today that it is not possible for people to get into any form of discussion without exchanging insults over differences of opinion, especially when it comes to political views. Often those political views are based upon misinformation and misconceptions that seem so warped that I truly am astounded at what I hear. I remember hearing the saying that politics makes for strange bedfellows, but the combinations that I am hearing these days truly boggle the mind. I do not begin to understand what is happening to American society, and I find it frightening.

Because I was an expatriate for many years, I know what it means to live outside my country and not to be affected by its internal strife. It was a safe feeling. I am again feeling a desire to be in that situation simply because the feeling I have while living in the United States is one of fear. I cannot feel safe when the situation around me seems so strange and so hostile. I have faced physical threats at times from persons speaking to me in hostile language, and I am not sure if this is the sort of common parlance of the New Millenium or if I am truly being threatened.

No matter what the explanation, I cannot feel comfortable knowing that I am being threatened, nor can I feel comfortable knowing that I have reported these threats to the authorities and that the authorities have done nothing about them. It makes me even more fearful. I can only wonder what is happening in the United States today.

It is not the country I remember from my childhood and youth. I keep hoping to wake up and discover that it is just a bad dream. Certainly if it is, my sleep has been a fitful one.

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