Join or Die

Does the image above look familiar? Anyone who has read an American history book in high school should have seen this before. This was a political cartoon created by Benjamin Franklin. However, it is usually mistakenly connected to the American Revolution, when in fact, the cartoon was drawn earlier, during the French and Indian War, calling the colonists of unite against the French. During the early years of the American Revolution, this cartoon was actually recycled without Ben Franklin's consent, to urge the colonists to once again unite, and this time against the British. Instead of 13 pieces to represent the 13 colonies, the snake is cut into 8 pieces, used to represent the 8 regions of the British East India Company. Whatever the application, the message is the same: forget our differences and join together as one country, as one body, or focus on what separates us, try to exist on our own, and eventually come to an inevitable death.

Nowadays, the snake is split in half, but instead of being easier to unite, it has become many times more difficult. Because over time, these differences have coalesced into ideologies, which are conveniently packaged and force-fed to the American public. Nowadays, the choice is simple, and you are either for us, or against us. Everything is so black and white. If you believe in so and so, then you must be against such and such. Anything in between is disregarded, as if we are given choice to fit the mold, or not be taken seriously at all.

In his famous work The Prince, Machiavelli illustrates the dangerous potential of a monarchy, republic, and democracy to fall into a dictatorship, oligarchy, and anarchy respectively. He had the insight at that time to envision a government incorporating all three types of government bodies, a system of coexistence that will dispel the dangers of each type of government existing on its own. And that is what we have in the U.S. today, and for a long time, in the form of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches. However, instead of keeping check on each other while working together toward a common goal, what we have is a constant debate, and a constant struggle to gain the majority vote for one's package of ideologies. Inaction and indecision have become keywords to describe congress, and it will eventually cause us as a country to become left in the dust. Candidates nowadays spend more time delivering harangues attacking each other's credibility and ideals, instead of offering solutions to our national problems. Once in office, the losing party attempts to prove the new incumbent's ineffectiveness by countering every one of his or her proposals, delaying action, instilling public impatience. This may help politicians win politically, but most of us Americans are losing, and if the system does not change soon, we will have less and less to lose.

In his song "Ghetto Gospel", Tupac Shakur says: "it ain't about black or white, cause we're human, I hope we see the light before its ruined." Well, it ain't about red or blue 'cause we're Americans, I hope we see the unity before the country is ruined.