Divisible

Whether we are one nation under God or not, we are certainly not indivisible. We are regularly divisible for all kinds of reasons. The lengths that we go to as a group of individuals to make ourselves appear indivisible are pretty impressive: all those Fourth of July picnics and parades, those moments when we are attacked by space aliens and we all band together as one to repel the invading forces. There are probably a whole lot of things, aside from Sara Lee, but that list is often obscured by the oppressive way in which we tend not to get along. We even had a war, back in the day, that we like to remember fondly as "brother against brother." We called this one our "Civil War," and even though Guns 'n' Roses went out of their way to let us know that there is nothing civil about war before disbanding in acrimony, we tend not to focus on the irony of that title.
Instead, some of us continue to celebrate this period in our history. An estimated fifty thousand Civil War re-enactors go out into the fields and forests of our heartland to pretend to shoot at one another with pretend guns and die pretend deaths in order to keep this memory alive. It could be this constituency that Mississippi's governor Phil Bryant is trying to appease by naming April "Confederate Heritage Month." It could be that since the American Civil War took place nearly a century and a half ago that Governor Phil doesn't have all his facts in place, since my research tells me that the Confederates were the losers in that one, and the guys in the gray suits have generally been described as the bad guys. Sure, there are at least fifty shades of gray, but since there was a surrender involved as well as a piece of our Constitution that was written to make sure that the terms were spelled out for future generations this one seems to be a done deal. Or maybe we like to cling to our past, no matter how divisive it might be.
After all, it was just a few months ago that the last battle flag came down from its lofty spot above the state house just a couple states away from where Bryant made his proclamation. For many, the Civil War isn't over.  Somebody should probably mention that even the Mississippi flag is about one quarter Confederate, and maybe that represents the good-hearted folks down there below the Mason-Dixon Line. Or maybe it's about time to let the past recede into the past. Let all those flags and gray uniforms go where they belong: museums.
And maybe we can be glad that Governor Phil doesn't want May to be "Nazi Heritage Month."