Amidst A War, A Moment Of Peace

​https://www.amazon.com/stores/Patti-Liszkay/author/B075FY33ZV?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

​
​Amidst A War, A Moment Of Peace

       It's so rare to unfold the front page of the morning paper and see something heartening. The opposite is more the norm. And yet there it was, last Friday in the Columbus Dispatch, a photograph of a moment of peace and solidarity ​​amidst an on-going war that seems to have been going on forever.   
        But in fact the major hostilities have only been going on for around thirty years. I'm talking, of course, about the long-term animosity between Congressional Republicans and Democrats, which would normally prevent the Senate leaders of the two parties from publicly agreeing about anything, much less being seen in a photo together.
      The war was set off sometime in the 1990's by then Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich,

...whose first order of business when his party won back the House of Representatives from the Democrats and he subsequently won the House speakership, was to name the Democrats as the enemy, to paint them as evil, unpatriotic, radical, traitorous, and never to be associated with. It was Newt Gingrich who declared war between Congressional Republicans and Congressional Democrats and painted a hyper-partisan line in the sand between them.
           By Gingrichian fiat, Democrats and Republicans were no longer to eat lunch together in the Congressional dining rooms. They weren't to meet together behind the scenes for dinner, drinks, and cigars to grind out compromises. They weren't supposed to compromise at all. 
       And so it's been a take-no-prisoners war ever since. Instead of legislating together, the two parties mostly skirmish in a constant game of capture-the-flag.
         Still, once in a rare, thankful while a truce is declared, as happened during a visit from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country is suffering terribly under the horror of a real war waged against his land and people by a monster aggressor,​

...as opposed to the senseless political and ideological war that's tearing our country apart. 
       And so the leaders of the Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer, were able to lay down their arms and come together in support of President Zelenskyy, walking with him on either side as they entered a meeting of Democratic and Republican Senators,

...where President Zelenskyy was given a warm and respectful welcome by both sides.   
      Funny how it took a war to generate a moment of peace.