Are We Reliving the Conflicts That Once Tore This Nation Apart?
Every so often, I catch myself wondering whether the United States is circling back to the very tensions that once fractured it so violently. We talk about the Civil War as if it were sealed in amber — a tragic chapter, safely behind us. But good golly, look around. The echoes are loud. We still have racial discrimination woven through daily life — not always in the overt forms our textbooks highlight, but in quieter, persistent patterns: unequal policing, disparities in housing and healthcare, and the stubborn myth that acknowledging racism is somehow more divisive than racism itself. The Civil War may have ended slavery, but it didn’t end the human impulse to create hierarchies of worth. And then there are families torn apart by politics . Not just spirited disagreements — I mean siblings who no longer speak, parents estranged from adult children, holidays canceled because the emotional cost is too high. The political divide has become a cultural divide, a moral divide, a “who...