A Rubicon Moment

For those of you that missed a certain shaving commercial last week, you apparently missed nothing in content.  But what was missed in the following uproar was the fact that we truly have become two very distinct cultures.

It was one of those moments - the Alia iacta est, the crossing of Rubicon or the first moment when Varus realizes the Germans have trapped him - that may go unrecognized in its impact until years later, when the dust has settled and Caesar is now dictator or the Rhine has become the Northern Border for the life of the Empire. 

Simply put, we are a two culture state.

Two culture states can exist, of course.  They have for thousands of years.  The way that they exist is, of course, that both cultures allow the other to exist and neither seeks to crush the other.  That whole "Do unto others" that so many people like to quote from the Bible as proof that God somehow endorses everything.

But where it breaks down, of course, is one culture seeks to become the dominant one and enforce its will on the other, crush it out of existence, burn its crops and salt its land.  In this world, it is more important to enforce ideological or cultural purity than it is to let people live.

Now more than ever, I find myself conflicted with people who believe differently than I - not that they believe differently, but that in the moment of blatant bias and hatefulness they choose not to cry "foul" but rather support if for no other reason than it represents "their side".  The dichotomy of carrying on a conversation knowing in my heart that if we touched on certain subjects that we would be in a heated argument is becoming more than I can bear.

This, in my mind, is the final death knell - or rather, the sign that great troubles are on the horizon.

People who no longer talk no longer do so because they believe that there is no point in talking. They no longer talk because they no longer feel that they are heard or any attempt to understand them is made.  And once talking no longer occurs, there is no other medium for resolution than action - and actions, once taken, cannot be undone.

The middle ground - or now, "No Man's Land" (Irony unintentional but present) - has now been destroyed by the guns of both sides leaving only a destroyed and pock marked landscape.  There is nothing left but the sounding of the whistles and bodies hurling over the trenches.