This is an opinion.
How elusive is unity in this day and age?
It’s taking a natural disaster to convince people in heavily Republican Mississippi to allow themselves to be rescued by FEMA workers from a Democrat-controlled federal government after Hurricane Ida blew through this week.
We’re also coming up on the 20th anniversary of a unifying event: the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
However, politicians at all levels of government — goaded on by small groups of supporters they often refer to locally as “citizens” — routinely fan the flames of division with talk of, “What’s in it for me and mine?”
They see windows of opportunity when the other side falters and move as fast as they can to climb through those windows.
Whether they know it or not, words matter. Tone matters. The more sharp each is, the more it cuts through efforts for uniting behind a common purpose.
We’ve seen three radio talk show hosts in recent weeks — who made their marks urging their listeners to oppose public health efforts to vaccinate against COVID-19 — lose their lives to the disease.
Marc Bernier, a conservative Florida radio host who called himself “Mr. Anti-Vax,” died recently after a three-week battle with COVID-19.
Our own Congressman Jody Hice has essentially been the mouthpiece for the Freedom Caucus, a group of congressmen so named, I guess, because they have the freedom to repeat any rumors or lies they hear about politicians from either party they don’t agree with.
Hice, a Republican and former pastor, has only sounded like a congressman doing his job in recent days as a member of the opposite party as he criticized the Democratic president for his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Now, we have football legend Herschel Walker returning to his Georgia hometown after decades in Texas, running for the U.S. Senate and speaking of the need for “unity.”
“When people start to talk about separation ... There is no ‘I’ in team, there’s no ‘we’ in team; It is called ‘team.’ And that’s how the team is better is when you play as one, as one group and it is sad this country is in the place it’s in today,” Walker told Fox Sports.
“The way we get it back is we got to get together and we need to talk these problems out and work them out and quit listening to a lot of these people who want to separate us.”
But at the same time he is running for the Senate — after never holding elected office at any level — at the urging of the producer of the Big Lie based on claims about voting irregularities not borne out by truth.
Donald Trump’s words led to changes in Georgia’s voting laws approved without the evidence needed to back up the need for them.
Meanwhile, Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, spoke about the need for unity soon after being inaugurated in January.
He argued it was not about all reaching the same choice on issues but about resolving disagreement.
Biden then went about signing more executive orders than his three predecessors combined. His call for “unity’ disappeared with his actions to reverse “bad policy” strongly supported by conservatives.
His call appears to be forgotten as he halted funding for the construction of Trump’s border wall, canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, among many other initiatives Biden’s liberal supporters cheered but conservatives jeered.
The only time the country appears to come together is when disaster strikes — or they fear their vehicle falling into a river as they drive on a decaying bridge. Yes, the recent passage of the federal infrastructure bill was a rare example of bipartisanship.
Until this county, state and country and its leaders decide how best to achieve a single goal all can live with, this “team” Herschel Walker spoke of may be going in the wrong direction for years to come.
Tom Spigolon is news editor of The Covington News. He can be reached at tspigolon@covnews.com.
