I Was Thinking About… Where We Stand as a Nation
Over the next several days, I’m going to share a series of reflections on where we are as a country. Not from a partisan perspective, not through the lens of one party or one leader, but from an honest look at the bigger picture—our divisions, our struggles, and our future.
This isn’t about blaming one side or another. It’s about recognizing the ways we’ve all contributed to the state of things—through action, inaction, or simply falling into the patterns that have been laid before us.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do know this: silence and complacency are not solutions. We cannot afford to ignore where we are. We must look at our country as it truly is—not as we wish it to be, not as we fear it to be, but as it stands today.
So, let’s talk about it.
First up: My State of the Union.
I Was Thinking About… My State of the Union
by Andy Lee
My fellow Americans, the state of our union is… fractured.
We are a nation divided, not just by politics, but by ideology, by identity, by fear, and by our own unwillingness to listen. We have allowed ourselves to be pawns in a system that thrives on division—where winning matters more than governing, where outrage replaces dialogue, and where compromise is seen as weakness rather than wisdom.
Washington is broken, but not just because of the politicians. It is broken because we have allowed it to be. We have cheered for our side like spectators at a football game, ignoring the consequences of policies that harm our neighbors so long as our “team” wins. We have shared misinformation, dismissed inconvenient truths, and abandoned critical thinking in favor of easy narratives that confirm what we already believe.
We have forgotten that democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires participation beyond casting a ballot every few years. It demands accountability—not just from those in power, but from ourselves. Yet, instead of holding our leaders to higher standards, we often accept their failures as long as they wear the right party colors. Instead of demanding better, we settle for less, rationalizing dysfunction as normal, inevitable, or even acceptable.
We were once a nation that prided itself on resilience, on problem-solving, on coming together in times of crisis. But today, even our shared struggles—whether economic hardship, social unrest, or global challenges—serve only to deepen our divides. We no longer debate solutions; we weaponize them. We don’t just disagree; we dehumanize.
This is not the fault of one person, one party, or one moment in time. It is the culmination of years—decades—of us choosing sides over solutions, tribalism over truth, and silence over action.
And make no mistake, silence is its own form of complicity. It is easy to blame corrupt politicians, greedy corporations, or sensationalist media for the mess we’re in. But the hard truth is this: The decline of a nation does not happen overnight, nor at the hands of a single leader. It happens slowly, as its people turn away from responsibility, as they disengage, as they decide it is easier to complain than to act.
So, where do we go from here? Can we recover from where we are?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that no law, no election, and no single leader can save us from ourselves. That part is up to us. The fate of this nation—its strength, its unity, its future—rests not in the hands of the few, but in the choices of the many.
Only time will tell whether we rise to the occasion.
“The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power.”
― Wael Ghonim
I was thinking about... 