Divided Americans playing with fire

The bodies of Confederate soldiers are strewn along Hagerstown Turnpike after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. /Photo by Alexander Gardner

I am uniquely positioned to gaze into the maw of the gaping divide between the law enforcement community and the African American community.

My father, who I love very much, is a retired Marine and arch conservative. He is an unwavering supporter of law enforcement who views the Black Lives Matter movement with disdain and suspicion.

My wife, who I love very much, is is an African American and champion of racial equality. She has experienced racial injustice perpetrated by public officials including law enforcement officers. My wife views the police with disdain and suspicion.

The events of the past week--including the fatal police shootings of two black men and the equally barbaric fatal shootings of police officers in Dallas--reflect divisions in American society that are as deep and wide as they were in the years leading up to The Civil War. 

If America fails to address the legacies of racial injustice such as police brutality directed at people of color, the nation is at grave risk of unleashing a downward spiral into a level of countryman vs. countryman violence at a scale not seen since the Civil War. If America fails to address the country's gun violence problem, law enforcement officers fearing for their lives will continue to kill civilians in unjustified shootings. If Americans do not stand in unity with all of their countrymen regardless of race, gender, sexuality, political partisanship, religious beliefs and a host of other relatively petty sources of divisiveness compared to our essential role as citizens of a great democratic nation, we will have no one but ourselves to blame for the crumbling of our society.

The events of the past week are so sad.

The problems facing our country are so apparent.

But like so many Southerners and Northerners in the prelude to The Civil War, most Americans are blind to the bloody carnage that is threatening to explode in their faces as the country careens into the current perilous corner of the nation's history.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." -President Abraham Lincoln