It is funny how politics can divide us. Well, it probably should for a little while, the same way cross town high school rivalries can divide a small city during the school year, but whereas we bounce back from a high school rivalry, the wounds of politics fester for a long time.

Listening to Rick Jensen today, (the loser) one could almost hear the sizzle of salt hitting fresh flesh…

Now as a numbers person I’m used to thinking of Red States versus Blue… It’s numbers; that simply is the rule we chose some 223 years ago to use as a tally. So when I look at a map and see the West and Northeast and Rust Belt, versus the South, the Middle Axis, and the Mountain States, I might be inclined to think, “gee our country is really divided”. But, (and it will soon emerge) if one looks at the individual counties or if someone actually delineates to wards, one sees a purple color descend and take over all of America.

So, to the uninitiated, this is a surprise. Everyone in Virginia is not blue. It just happens that within those lines on a map, more people support blue ideas instead of red ideas. It just takes one more human being to tip the balance, to turn that state from red to blue. The same can be said in reverse for Texas.

This was brought to mind last night as those watching early returns sometimes got their hopes up, only to be dashed as more votes came in….

America needs to forget about these divisions (unless they are in charge of a national election campaign). For the rest of us, they don’t matter….

Have you ever stood in line to pay for groceries? If you have, I want you to visualize standing with 10 people in front of you… Now if you can do that, I want you to imagine half of those people “thinking people over money”, and the other half thinking “money over people”… Those of us who have lived real life, know that those values can change depending upon whichever circumstances we find ourselves at the moment…

Now imagine half of them wearing blue shirts, and half of them wearing red… Exactly split, down the middle…. Viola. That is North Carolina, (50-50); it is also Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida.

Now imagine that line where one blue shirt was replaced by one red… Now you are up to states like Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, and West Virginia… We tend to think of these as really backwards environments full of cut-out Rush Limbaughs driving pickup trucks. Yet all we did was switch one person’s shirt in line, giving us a 6-4 ratio instead of 5-5…. None of those 9 other people changed.

Now switch that one swing person to a blue, you have… California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island.. all blatantly called liberal states where no conservative would dare live, …. but …four out of ten do…

In fact, The only difference statistically between West Virginia and Delaware, is one person’s shirt, waiting in line in front of you… If they choose to wear a red shirt, “heaven help us”. If they choose to wear a blue, “hooray for our side”, It is important to note: none of the other nine people change a thing….

So the reality is that in Congress, two diametrically opposing entities, Delaware and West Virgina, have the same makeup in population (statistically speaking) except for one person choosing to wear a blue or red shirt….

There is really no reason those two states can’t compromise based on that one person’s preference. The other 9 people all share the same shirts, irregardless of what state they come from….

Our national problem is that some nefarious outside influence, is using this one change of a shirt’s color, to halt all our nation’s progress forward…