The Blog of armine

I don't know why, specifically... but I have a sinking feeling about this year's presidential election. It started a few weeks ago, as I listened to people on both sides of the aisle; now I just feel a sense of dread and apprehension, like we're all on a ship that is going to sink under our collective weight. Maybe we should change this country's name to 'the divided states of America', because it seems to me as though we are really not just 'one nation, under God' anymore. There are so many different kinds of people who live in this country now - and the problems, the riffs that are popping up go beyond politics, religion, or education. It's even bigger than these things. There are people who have fundamentally different viewpoints on living in a general sense; this idea that we can 'all come to the table and hash things out' sounds a bit idealistic to me. It isn't any one particular issue, or idea, that is causing this country to splinter off into all these little 'American' subpockets of culture and lifestyles; it is rather, I think, a dizzying number of factors that go into the complications of today's America. Nowadays, the fabric of our nation is rather like a patchwork quilt, with all these different designs and colors and shapes and sizes. Consequently it is becoming more difficult to define us as a nation, much less talk about America as one entity anymore; if we still are then I'm just not seeing it. I feel vaguely apprehensive about what lies ahead for this country, because there are too many cooks in the kitchen at the moment and someone's going to blow up the oven.