We Are All One America

Staff of President Clinton’s One America Initiative, the Initiative on Race
Picture credit: Public Domain


Watching the returns for Florida last night was a mixed blessing.
Most importantly to us, Amendment One passed with 75% of the voters in this state approving it.
And thankfully, the elections are over and the dirty nasty commercials are all gone, at least until 2016.
The mixed in this blessing, is that any gains won overnight with the passing of this Amendment and its promise of protecting wildlife, could potentially soon be erased, or at the very least,  at the mercy in the next few years, of the new powers to be.
People all over this country are angry, at anyone and everyone in public office.
I, we,  do not blame them.
So are we.
Our anger is about the way that this state is being run and those in power here who seem to care little for the things that we value most.
But trying  to blame everything that is wrong in this country right now on our President,  is wasting time and energy and getting us all nowhere.
What is wrong in America,  is NOT all Obama’s fault.
There  is plenty of blame to go around.
We are all guilty,  one way or another.
Those in Washington, who fail repeatedly to do their jobs.
Those voters who whine and complain, yet do not vote.
Those who write big checks to buy a result for their own personal financial gain.
Plenty of guilt,  plenty of blame to be shared.
When no one does the right thing, we all end up with the wrong thing.
Last night’s total political flogging  and the resultant prospect of having the country completely run by a single party,  may not bode well for the things that many of us care  deeply about.
So, for the next two years, Walkingfox and I, as well as many of you, will try our best to watch over those with no voice and keep them from harm.
It is not right for animals and wild places to suffer because people want to make a point, to send a message.
But they are throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Florida and the Country need a lot of fixing and it will take both sides, no, all sides, all of us in America working together to fix it.
As long as we keep blaming each other, nothing will ever get better, it will just continue hurting us all.
Pushing us farther apart and still getting nothing done.
I keep remembering the words that Gandhi said to the father who had lost his child to an enemy.
Gandhi told the man filled with hate to go and find a child of those who had killed his and to raise it as his own, but that he must raise it in the culture and religion of those who killed his child.
If America is ever to recover from this basement, this cesspool of shame and blame that we have fallen into, we must reach out to one another  and try to not only understand, but  more importantly,  to accept our individual uniquenesses.
Those glorious things that make us all so special.
We are not simply Democrats or Republicans,  or any political party.
We are all different, we are all the same, we are One America.