Family Therapy for 300 Million

Professor J,

Boy, your opening paragraph is loaded! The last statement is interesting but I'm relaxing this week and hardly in the mood to divert attention to the theological untangling that would require. I might ask "Where's the love?" though.

We are looking more and more like the family who is willing to spend all the inheritance money on lawyers just so our dysfunctional side of the family can win. We may even burn down the old homestead in the process. No matter. We don't even know how we all ended up in the same family together and we are now willing to sacrifice whatever familial relationship and good will that use to exist to be right.  Our ever constantly shell shocked ears are now only attuned to rhetorical explosions in sound bites.

And to draw from an old joke we have in the south about not hiding our crazy relatives in the attic, but bringing them right into the parlor to show them off, each side now not only isn't embarrassed by the bombastic things that are said, but more and more it is proudly embraced. We have sent our crazy uncles to legislate on our behalf. What's worse--we are starting to lose touch with a standard for rational behavior.

Half of the family wants to disown the other half, and we are barely on speaking terms. The Hatfields and McCoys would just be so proud.

We need family therapy. Tough love. A Dr. Phil/ Uncle Sam who would force us to look each other in the eye and listen while we work toward solutions. Of course even with the hardest work and best intentions relationships with people who are truly toxic to us can't be saved. We are all feeling a severe lack of trust and rampant insecurity.  Perfect for an economic nervous breakdown.

The problem is we are all going over the cliff together in the same boat, crazy uncles and all. Kind of a high price to pay to be able to say that "our side" didn't give in. Which is going to sound pretty silly on the way down.