A headline on a recent news article caught my eye, for it declared, “Americans Disagree on Everything.”

I said to myself: “I disagree with that!”

Indeed, the untold story of today’s America is the good news that We the People fundamentally agree on more than what supposedly separates us. It is true that our daily media feed does relentlessly push political negativity and discord, and it’s true that hyper-partisan politicians grab attention by hammering their narrow views into swords of hatred. But that’s them, not the greater us.

Even hot-button issues which dominate the Internet and talk-shows are actually not all that divisive for the majority of us. For example, nearly 90 percent of Americans (including two-thirds of Republicans) oppose the right-wing attempt to whitewash our nation’s history by restricting teachers, museums etc. from addressing such realities as slavery.

More significantly, consider the real needs of ordinary workaday families. Basics like living wages, protecting Social Security, busting-up monopolies, cleaning up pollution, providing affordable housing, funding our parks and libraries, stopping price gouging. Overwhelmingly, Americans in red, blue, and purple areas agree on what government ought to be doing – and disagrees with what it is doing. But the plutocratic moneyed elites that now fund and perpetuate Americas corrupt and dysfunctional government profit by promoting hatreds to pit us against each other, praying that all of us don’t focus on them.

Don’t succumb to their self-serving lies, but seek ways to unite in what we Americans do agree on – specifically our historic commitment to the democratic values of economic fairness, social justice, and equal treatment for all. Anything less is BS.

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