Just thoughts.

Last night I was watching a television program reviewing various events and pop culture happenings of the new millennium. It wasn't on the History channel or anything so I wasn't expecting any particularly serious material. Imagine my surprise when the segment on 2001 closed with a piece on September 11. The focus was on how the country banded together. Far-left leaning comics said with very serious looks on their faces that they went out and bought American flags. Another commented that she saw a man standing by the side of the road that day, and people who drove by were honking at him to show their support. She said she cried all the way to work and when she got their, she called her dad and told him that she finally knew what the flag stood for.
Now it's several years later and we've all gone back to hating each other.
It's not just Democrats and Republicans bickering with each other, though. It's Republicans fighting over whether or not they really support John McCain. It's Democrats still bitter about the way Hillary Clinton was treated by the press, paving the way for Obama to take the Democratic nomination. We fight over the war. We fight over the economy. We fight over the environment, abortion, gay marriage, immigration, torture, oil, whose television channel is more biased, religious "tolerance", evolution vs. creationism, and even whether people should be allowed to homeschool their children.
It was not that many years ago that everyone was getting along for a few weeks. In our state of shock and our surge of patriotism we acted like humans and put our differences aside for some civil conversation. We were reminded that there are more important things going on in the world than telling everyone who will listen, as loudly as we can, "I'm right and there's nothing you can say that will convince me otherwise". It's really depressing that the destruction of buildings and the deaths of thousands of innocent people is the only thing that can make us think of others, and of our likenesses, than to think of ourselves and focus on our differences.