TWO HIPPOS, ONE TUB

     There is a proverb from the Cote d'Ivoire that goes like this: "Two hippopotamuses cannot share the same hole". For ease, I have changed hole to tub. Please excuse my literary license.
     Think about it, particularly in the context of modern times, in the roiled atmosphere, the boiling water, in that one tub. So you say that you have never had even one hippo in your tub let alone two, so what gives? Not a real problem.
     Yet it is. We, our country, is the tub, and the two hippos are the growing groups of people on either side of this tub. One hippo represents those who remember an America of true pride, an America which acknowledged its errors, its past, and tried to make its present and future just that much better. It struggled, for it is not easy to change things, not easy to insure that the privileges of being an American are open to all, not restricted by gender or ethnicity or religion or place of origin or any outer difference that in actuality makes no difference at all!
     Michelle Obama, a very bright woman, said the following:"What truly makes our country (tub) great is its diversity. Whether we are born here or seek refuge here, there's a place for us all....it's not my America or your America. It's our America."  It captures the meaning and representation of the one hippo.
      Now we come to the other hippo, the one that has a rank odor, the odor of hatred, of greed, of an unfair society, a hippo that thinks that to make or rather, keep, our country great, it must be kept white and that is not enough. Who is white and what is the religion of the white hippo, the beliefs, the rights that go along with it - all that is defined categorically, no arguing with it, lest this hippo lose its way upon the path it has chosen to find its way into that tub.
     Lincoln said a long time ago during a crisis of national angst that "a House divided against itself cannot stand.....I do not expect the house to fall. It will become all one thing or the other." Think about that. If so, then which way will we go? Which hippo will receive all our bets, allowed into that tub? Shall we go the right way, with the proper hippo, the one that demands hard work and morality, or shall we go with the other, the ugly and scarred one, the one that approves hate. This is the same hippo that wishes to place migrant children separated from parents in that same Fort Sill that held, in turn, Apaches, driven from their lands, cheated in their treaties, Japanese interned illegally and immorally during WWII, the same hippo that allowed, even encouraged and led the mob, that massacred Mexican Americans on the border 100 years ago, calling them "border bandits". Citizens all.
     There is hope for the proper hippo. Hundreds protest at one place or another. Thousands protest at various places, together, with the same goals - to keep their hippo out of our tub, for there is no room for them. It is time that all recognize that Trump represents the worst of us, the very lowest common denominator one can find amongst mankind. He lies and lies and finally is out in the open as he praises that hurtful and always racist meme to send people back from whence they came!! He actually, and openly, calls those chanters, that mob, patriotic!! I am sick!! I am sick to the stomach as I watch all the spineless Republicans refuse to condemn his hatred, and as I watch to see that the Democrats do the same and condemn the hateful remarks and plans of Omar, Tlaib and Lewis. Or have we all lost a piece of us that cannot be replaced, a loss that sends our hippo off into the wilderness, limping and mortally wounded?
     Perhaps we can pull it all together with the testimony of Mueller this week, if he gathers his courage to the sticking point and people truly open their eyes to the not pending but already in action war of the two hippos over the same tub. Time is running out. It can happen here. It has come close to it before, before the true spirit of America came  through, and it can happen again, especially in such a hatefilled and turbulent era. The water in the tub is roiling and boiling, dangerous to all who enter it the wrong way. 
     Keep the words and the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt in mind as we struggle together. 
     "With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts." May we use that new day and new thoughts and strength the right way, the proper and moral way, and finally, turn away from hate. The alternative is not a good one. Not at all.