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Like Brothers and Sisters

In most families with kids, the siblings fight.  Throughout their lives there are dust-ups, disagreements, falling outs, and brawls, unless the parents are able to calm the older sibling and keep them from killing the younger (thanks Mom and Dad for not letting my annoying ways cause my untimely demise!).

What happens, though, when the school bully or the mean kid from around the corner harasses the younger sibling?  Right, generally speaking the older sibling will come to the defense of the younger because blood is thicker than water.  It's what you do.  It's what's right.  It's what's expected.

I have a theory that our political parties have been like those un-harassed siblings since the end of the cold war.  Republicans have been wedgied by Democrats, and Democrats have been nuggied by Republicans.  There's been short-sheeting of the beds, saran-wrapping of the toilets, and each has left the constituents of the other party left to be picked last for kickball.

Without the Soviet Union coming in to try and pop or steal the ball, without them trying to take our brother's bike and throw it in the creek we have descended into such internal bickering and infighting that we have forgotten that we are all part of one American family.  We all live in the same house.  We have ONE House of Representatives where both parties come together to meet, ONE Senate where the same is true, ONE Star Spangled Banner that we sing to start our sporting events, and we are ONE nation under God.  It is high time we started acting like it.

I'm not saying we all need to see the details of contested policies in the same light or from the same perspective.  What I am saying is that we need to wake up to the reality that Vladimir Putin is a bully who is trying his best to tear down the fabric of the peace-keeping organizations of the western world and we are one of the main houses in that neighborhood.  We need to come together and defend each other.  In my opinion it is time for Red and Blue to join forces to fight off the "mean kid".  Politics be damned for a bit and look at what is happening.  When the US President is inviting the Russian foreign minister and ambassador into a closed-door meeting in the Oval Office because Putin asked him to, with no American press agents there to document it, something is wrong.

To my Republican brothers and sisters, my Democrat sisters and brothers, and to those I know who support the right to defend your house against an intruder and shoot him with your legally-licensed hand gun, shotgun, or AR-15 I say, 
"Please acknowledge that an enemy has put his foot inside the window of our house and has every intent of stealing our prized possessions!  The time to take action is now!"

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