Commentary: A country divided
Before reading this commentary, you probably didn’t think the title would be referring to the United States of America.
However, we are indeed the topic.
I believe our government in Washington, D.C., is dysfunctional. It seems like the only time we are not divided is when there is a disaster — and then we are managing by crisis, which is never optimal.
Things that really matter
David Brooks is an opinion columnist for The New York Times who typically writes about social sciences, culture and politics. He is considered an American conservative political and cultural commentator.
He feels we — as a society — are “overpoliticized and undermoralized.” That is, we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about politics and not enough time thinking about things that really matter.
Sounds like a description of what is going on in Washington!
As only one example, an analysis of CDC data by KFF — formerly known as Kaiser Family Foundation — showed 539,810 people died by suicide in the United States from 2011 to 2022. The adjusted suicide rate increased by 16% during this period.
CDC provisional data showed 49,369 suicide deaths in 2022 — a single-year record — following small decreases in 2019 and 2020.
Provisional data for 2022 also showed the highest number of gun-related suicides on record, with increases in firearm suicides driving the overall increase in suicide deaths.
There’s a surprise — and here we are back to gun control, with not much progress every time a mass shooting is reported.
Who would have thought that in Maine, there would be 18 people killed and 13 others injured in a shooting rampage in October 2023. That’s right, the state of Maine! Tragically, the youngest killed was a 14-year-old boy bowling with his father.
‘Simple yet powerful tool’
Some feel the only way to heal the country is through conversations in which one person sees the world from the perspective of the other.
Nice thought, but one person at a time means that I'm not going to see the results — and neither, probably, will my two young daughters.
It seems to me that an annoying and angry minority of individuals dominate the news and social media.
It also seems to me that we have a simple yet powerful tool to change this.
One word: VOTE.
Vote the people who are thinking of themselves and nobody else out of office, whether it’s locally, regionally or nationally.
In a few short months, we will be back to the polls for national and local elections. Get your families and friends to vote! The right to do so is fundamental to our democracy and it must be protected for all Americans.
We don't need another attack on the Capitol. We do need serious and effective gun control, an alternative to our broken campaign finance system, a commitment to ensure Medicare and Social Security are safe, funding to protect the arts in schools, competitive salaries so we don't lose teachers, solutions to fix drug shortages in cancer and other disease entities, and — once and for all — a willingness to stop the spiraling cost of health care in our country.
Lastly, how about strengthening our nation’s ethics laws? It seems the line between public service and private interests is about as blurry as it can get, with no clear divide.
An ‘extraordinary’ need
You know my list is far from complete, and these problems need all of our politicians to work together. Well, good luck with that!
I'd like to go home at night and listen to one national “respected” news channel that has all good news. I don't see that happening for a very long time.
That's tough for me to say because, throughout my adult life, I've been optimistic. However, that is very hard to do in these trying, difficult and unsafe times.
Let me end with a quote from Lou Holtz, the last football head coach to win a national championship at the University of Notre Dame.
Holtz, who was — and still is — a great motivational speaker, once said: “I can’t believe God put us on this earth to be ordinary.”
That’s what we need now — extraordinary people.
Stay safe.
References:
- Brooks D. Let's have a better culture war. New York Times. Published June 7, 2016. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/opinion/lets-have-a-better-culture-war.html.
- KFF. A look at the latest suicide data and change over the last decade. Available at: https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/a-look-at-the-latest-suicide-data-and-change-over-the-last-decade/. Published Aug. 4, 2023. Accessed Dec. 20, 2023.
- Lou Holtz [@CoachLouHoltz88]. Oct. 21, 2018. X (Twitter).
For more information:
Nicholas J. Petrelli, MD, FACS, is Bank of America endowed medical director of ChristianaCare’s Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute and associate director of translational research at Wistar Cancer Institute. He also serves as Associate Medical Editor for Surgical Oncology for Healio | HemOnc Today. He can be reached at npetrelli@christianacare.org.
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