My fellow citizens — my family —
We need to talk.
Not as Democrats. Not as Republicans. Not as left or right, red or blue, this side or that side.
We need to talk to each other according to what we actually are underneath all of it: as *we, the people.*
For too long, we have let politics divide us.
Not just cause us to disagree with each other — flat *divide* us.
It divided my Mom with my Grandmother and Uncle....especially around the holiday get-togethers.
It caused the most damage between me and my mom; mostly over her handing me a pre-filled ballot and requiring me to show my 'Just Voted' sticker same day to avoid her 'wrath'!
I really never listened as a kid, as a pre-teen..then she parted ways with me around 15.......and I never really caught up with her again until years later, about 300 miles north of where we parted...Polk County.
After catching up and making up with my Mom, the years moved on. I stayed in an apartment attached to my mom's house.
I ended up 2 years later getting married to a beautiful girl and having children. Bought a House in Avon Park.
Me, my mom and my growing family would get along for about 2 years.
It was the day that my mom showed up to drop off that pre-filled ballot during a presidential election year and I said no, that the divide erupted. Big Time!!
I saw in my wife's eyes the disbelief and shock. my mom's 20 minute rant was like I was firing her from a job!! I was disowned!
Politics literally could AND did turn a mother against her son.
It can also pit neighbor against neighbor, brother against sister, coworker against coworker, all over a red or blue color on a map and a R or D next to a name.
And while we've been busy fighting or avoiding each other, something else has been happening at the top, quietly, on schedule, like clockwork....as it always has.
Because here is the truth: the power at the top changes hands all the time — different faces, different parties, different decades — but the results never change.
The ball gets passed from one team to the other, and every time it does, we're told this time will be different.
And every time, we're still standing here, holding the same bag, owing the same debt, feeling a little less proud and a little more tired than we did before.
They Ask Us to Follow Blindly
They ask us to follow them blindly.
They want our devotion and our patriotism — and the moment we dare to question them or ask for clarification, they call us cowards.
Angry that we even questioned them, they then not only question our patriotism, our morals, but they start to make us doubt our own opinions; our own road map in life.
They claim to hold the roadmap to America's success, yet they have never once been able to produce it or even tell us where the next exit is!
They claim to have our best interests at heart — but somehow, the only interest that ever seems to come out "best" is their own.
They claim to be the Democratic left. They claim to be the Republican right. Some of them even claim to be independent of both, above the fray, and on nobody's side but ours, WE the people.
But underneath all of that, here is the truth none of them say out loud: *they* — the Democrats, the Republicans, the Independents, all of them — are not the ones in control. But none of them can point out who is.
It has become painfully obvious that control gets passed back and forth, almost on cue, so that the left, the right, and the middle each get their turn to push the limits, break the rules, run right up to the penalty line
Then, just before the whistle blows to end the game, the ball gets passed to the other team.
It's just the game continuing, turn after turn, decade after decade, while WE the people are the ones left holding the bag — still owing the debt, still losing what little pride and strength we have left, still turned against each other, blaming one another, until the ball changes hands again and the whole thing starts over...WTH!
But as always, there's another game scheduled soon. And as they prep their teams to take the court, as they put together the schedules for future games; we have to figure out how defeat that franchise.
So let's figure out how to stop playing their game.
Each team has their own fans. The fans are what make that team strong. The fans pay for the tickets, the parking, the food.
The team and the fans are like family... What if the team decided the fans weren't the important commodity? What if those teams decided to collude?
What is a team decided that together with other teams they could get more money out of rigging games then they could out of the devoted and patriotic fans paying to watch them play? Hmmmm....
What About Family?!
Here is what I know about family, and you probably know it as well...
A real family is made up of all kinds of people.
Some family members talk a big game and don't back it up. They walk big, they talk big,- yet they trip when they try to run.
Some family members go quiet, too insecure to speak up even when they should.
But that's probably because of an influence of other family members, not their choice.
Some family members try to lead the rest of the family whether the rest of the family wants to be led or not. This alone can be divisive.
And yes — some family members are irresponsible. Some are crazy and out right dangerous...
Some family members do wrong, and we're tempted to disown them, to pretend they're not ours.
But they are still family. We don't get to choose or pretend otherwise.
That means we have to take responsibility — not just for our own actions, but for what our own family members have done to others.
Sometimes hard decisions have to be made on how that family members future with the family is decided.
That's what a family does. It doesn't look away. It backs up and sticks with the family members who are doing right by the family.
If that family makes a wrong choice or makes a mistake, it take responsibility and if necessary action to make corrections.
Someone who is wrong, admits they are wrong, proceeds to make corrections... That's someone the family should honor.
It's easier to trust somebody who admits when they are wrong, than it is to trust somebody who constantly says they're never wrong.
But a family also has to be honest with itself.
Sometimes, after everything, you look at a family member and you realize: this relationship is doing more harm than good.
And you have to separate from that family member. Not out of hatred — but out of self-preservation of the family, and out of respect for what family is supposed to mean.
Because sometimes, the truth is, a good neighbor is a better choice than a bad relative.
Loyalty to a name, an entity or person is not the same thing as loyalty to what's right and just!
That is where we are, as a country, right now. We have let "family" — party, tribe, team — mean loyalty no matter what.
And it's cost us everything we actually have in common.
We didn't lose control of our own destiny because were weak.
We lost our direction because we kept playing a game that was never built for us to win.
Just like gambling, The house (or Senate) always has the advantage.... and no matter how many small wins we make, we still lose overall.
Engineered to Divide
Think about how long this division has been in the making.
The shows we watched.
The commercials in between them.
The news, packaged and delivered a certain way, decade after decade.
None of it by accident.
Long before anyone had a name for a "social media algorithm," we were already living inside one.
Early media used a slow, generational drip designed to shape how we see each other, until "the other side" stopped looking like family and started looking like the enemy.
It's time to stop playing their game — and start being family again.
Your COUNTY Is Your World....
No.... I didn't misspell Country...
Take a close look at your own family.
Then take a good look at your street, your city, your community.
Then look at your county.
That is your world — one of 67 counties in the state of Florida, and on any ordinary day, it might not feel like much.
But you would be surprised how small and how isolated your world becomes the moment things go wrong.
If disaster struck tomorrow — the power out, the internet down, the roads impassable — your county would *be* your whole world, whether you liked it or not.
With no signal and nowhere to drive, you would be depending on your neighbor, your city, your county, to survive.
And in that moment, there is no political line, no ethical line, no party line — not when the issue in front of you is simply *who has water and who doesn't.*
That neighbor who used to get under your skin with his yard signs — the one you kept reporting to code enforcement — doesn't look so bad when he's the one showing up with water or to help you clear the debris.
And you don't look like such a headache to him either, now that you're letting him run an extension cord off your generator.
Without him, you go thirsty.
Without you, he sits in the dark.
Politics never once entered the equation — necessity did.
We are more of a family to each other than we let ourselves believe.
Sometimes a stranger shows more empathy, more understanding, in one afternoon than we've shown our own friends and family in years.
We shouldn't have to wait for a disaster to learn something this simple.
We Need Each Other
Politics can survive on division....Necessity cannot.
When the lights are out and the water isn't running..... nobody asks who you voted for — they ask if you're okay, and then they try to help.
That is who we already are underneath all of it. We've already been there... We have already experienced it... More than once!
Not left and right. Not red and blue.
Neighbors. Family.
We don't need a disaster to remember that.
We just need to choose it — today, on purpose, before the next crisis makes the choice for us.
I'm just sayin'. RB
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