“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

This famous line comes from the old comic strip Pogo created by Walt Kelly. I think I used it not long ago.

But what does it mean? If you belong to a group – a family, a church, a knitting circle, a ball team, or whatever, you become part of an “us;” that “us” often share common ideas, values, goals, etc.

Now what happens when a member of an “us” group says something that does not conform to the shared common ideas, values, goals, etc.? That can be very scary as it separates us from our “us”. We are in danger of becoming and regarding as one of “them” or not “us.”

Unless one of our shared values is total openness to all ideas we risk not being part of us; but that us isn’t it?

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

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We, (us) are all Americans, members of the U.S.A. whether we are Republican or Democrat, no matter where we came from, or what we believe. We are an us. And we are our own enemy.

We are all co-inhabitors of the earth, sharing its resources and connected by our genes; we are all human beings part of the human community. We are an “us” and we are our own enemy.

We are all the children of God, though some of us deny it. We are an extended family with a variety of ideas, goals, concepts and the like, but we are still related as the brothers and sisters of a common parent, God, no matter what name we use for that parent. We are an “us” and we are our own enemy.

If you are picking pronouns I like us better than them. But that’s just me speaking to you as a part of us.