OK, so I did lend some credence to the notion that we are a ‘divided nation’ in yesterday’s post. But to prove I have some of the perspective I argued for in my last post, I would like to call attention to one example (although I know I’ve seen several others in the last year or so, particularly during the election, this was the first result that came back from a Google search) of someone who lacks perspective on what it really means to be divided:

After last week we can finally bury this “Post Racial” myth. The false arrest of Dr. Henry L. Gates proved that this country is more divided than ever.

My response to this is a great big “OH REALLY??!” More divided than during the Civil War, when the country was literally divided and over 600,000 soldiers and who knows how many civilians were killed? I would argue that no matter how many Harvard professors are unjustly arrested in their own homes (a travesty to be sure), our metaphorical ‘divisions’ are plenty preferable to the literal divisions we’ve experienced in the past.