Do you wonder what we’re fighting about?

                  In grade school, we had two teams, the Reds and Blues, to which one was randomly assigned unless an older sibling was already enrolled, in which case families mustered under the same flag. Reds and Blues competed on Field Day. Teams had uniforms, slogans, fight songs. You “represented” your team in various contests – broad jump, high jump, dash, three-legged race, tug of war – any victories adding points to your team’s total. The team with the most points won a flashy cup, solemnly delivered to our captain at day’s end. Parents carried home their youngsters elated or crushed depending on the result, as if we’d striven for victories that mattered.

                  I disliked Field Day, lacking any talent – any – for field sports. Later in life I became a fair tennis player at the local level, but that was due to grit, not natural prowess. I wanted to win – man, did I ever – but that was to prove my individual worth, not advance any common cause. The same crazy ambition keeps my fingers flickering today. 

                  It wasn’t sadism that moved my grade school to partition students into teams. If anyone had asked, they’d have argued it was healthful for students to learn team play. Wasn’t “team spirit” – that is, enthusiasm over a meaningless affiliation – an incontrovertible good? Seven decades later, few extant classmates will recall much of our school days, but they will their color. Mine was Blue. 

                  Reds and Blues are still at it in our nation, with our fight songs, uniforms, chants, team spirit. Praised for devotion to our team, we’re schooled not to question our party’s principles or tactics, which have been dictated from on high. Party discipline is meritorious. Compliance is extolled even unto self-destruction. As Tennyson rhymed memorably about an earlier gung-ho brigade: 

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

                  It makes me sick.

                  Why were we given brains if not to use them? Henry and other non-humans behave sensibly in the main by not thinking. They get along fine, “doin’”, in Irving Berlin’s infectious phrase, “a-what comes Natur’ly.” Humans think ourselves into insanity.

                  In our forthcoming national election, now less than six weeks distant, it will be impossible for any half-aware citizen to argue that our current leadership is doing a competent job managing America for its majority. Their successes so far have been:

 waging failed and pointless wars,

alienating our allies,

assisting our enemies,

weakening our defenses,

reducing taxes for plutocrats,

unsettling our economy,

corroding public health,

denying rights and assistance to the less privileged,

undermining truth and trust in our institutions,

and pilfering public treasure from the many for the few.

Their cruelty has matched their incompetence. It’s been breathtaking. Yet, come Election Day, at least a quarter of my fellow citizens, apparently not lunatic, will endorse the continuance of this regime. When asked why, they’ll rat-a-tat slogans – Woke! Trans-gender! Communist! – they can’t explain.

                  Why?

                  My theory is insecurity. Unconvinced by what our brains are telling us, we seek the reassurance of affiliation and the satisfaction of ludicrous eminence.  Reds are better than Blues because, duh, they just are! Animus invigorates stymied intellects. Sing that fight song lustily and feel better fast.

                  I’m no team player, I hope. Better my own misjudgments than the rabid righteousness of the mob. Let me see with my own eyes, stumble to my own conclusions, make reply, reason why, and resist premature entombment in the valley of Death.