Reply #14: I hinted in the poll my own personal Anger Button ......

[Stinky The Clown]

.... which is the whole religion-culture-family values-'middle America' thing they played so well and continue to play.

They are intentionally dividing this country to conquer it. I have fallen prey to it as have many of you. It is my view that most everything in my poll is, arguably, a result of that manufactured division even more than an issue in and of itself.

If we have anger buttons, it is because they have pitted us against each other. We are no longer able to pull together as a nation. Yet, until very recently, that spirit of shared sacrifice and shared burden was what made our nation so great. From the inception of the country, to the Great Depression, to WWII ......

True enough, there were other times of great national divide, but was any of it based so strongly on intangibles? The Civil War was about **issues** that could be debated and, yes, fought over. More recently, people of my generation fought and took to the streets over the Viet Nam war.

But the divide today is visceral, deeply ingrained, and about nothing that is an issue, really. They can't even classify us as to our stances because there are so many small issues that, as a lump, have become a gaping maw of a chasm that separates us from each other.

Soccer Moms and NASCAR Dads. Eastern Liberal Elites and California Hippies. Labels by the score. Pro Choice and Pro Life. Each set of yin-yang labels a small divide. Collectively, a massive cleaving.

My anger is directed against the truly evil manipulators who caused us to be so. And I'm not even sure who they are .......

I mourn for my country that once was but may never be again. My work often takes me to our Nation's Capitol, where I see the grandeur of the public buildings and feel incredibly sad to see them as they are now. Once the sybols of freedom and liberty, they are now armed fortresses with exceedingly limited access. The great artwork in their halls, commissioned by the likes of FDR during the Depression as a way to support even artists, now cut off from public view. Metal detectors and black Chevy Suburbans. Men with ear buds. Sniper posts on the roofs. Trailers with camouflage paint and sniffer gear parked all around town. Cement assault barriers.

America: Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.

I miss you dearly.