Stephen Trexler: The versus mentality

How long will we as citizens of this great nation continue to base our decisions using the premise of “us vs. them”? As long as this mindset continues, there will never be a truly United States of America.

Consider this for a moment. Underprivileged vs. affluent, white vs. black, cops vs. residents, believers vs. unbelievers, my group vs. your group – whatever position we take is because we want things to be more in favor of our particular ideology.

To prevail is the goal, however we may define it, quite often to the detriment of any spirit of cooperation and unity, which is necessary for any treatise or plan to succeed.

This has not always been our cultural mindset. It is just most recently that the welfare of the individual has been allowed to overshadow the welfare of the majority that the versus mentality surfaced.

We look for some individual or group to blame for a particular problem when in actuality the buck should stop here. When we as individuals decide to cease deflecting the blame and take cooperative action against our national and cultural problems, whatever they maybe, then we will be the United States of America.

This story was originally published September 10, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Stephen Trexler: The versus mentality."