NEW YEAR’S PERSPECTIVE – 2017   Since the beginning of this Blog, we have paused after the New Year’s celebrations to reflect on the year just past. Each year as Expatriates has brought new and different experiences.  Thinking back on these events seems to help us better understand this stimulating and different life we are now living. Of course, not all last year’s experiences affected us in positive and reinforcing ways. In reflecting back on 2016, a general refrain we are hearing from others as well is a diminished enthusiasm for some of what the past year brought. The major event in our United States homeland was a presidential election. The overall impression is that process was marked by division, acrimony, and expressions of vitriol largely rooted in fear and exploited anxiety.  What might have been hoped for in reasoned explorations of alternative visions to bring about a better tomorrow was largely drowned out in negativity. The presidential election process projected an overall absence of civilly moderated, reasoned dialog discouraged by the disparaging of ‘political correctness.’ The outcome appears to be we have been forced to confront the reality that just barely beneath the surface of American culture, there lurks coarseness and crude insensitivity. Apparently, a commitment to maintain a cohesive and inclusive American larger sense of common community has been sacrificed in favor of identity politics. This extremely troubling development is a consequence of fomenting division as a political strategy – a classic ‘divide and conquer’ objective. Demagoguery too easily replaces reasoned, civil debate in a society saturated in the stimulating noise of mass media entertainment. A meaningful vision of ‘a larger, We’ somehow gets lost in the process. Americans are now confronted by deep divisions within the fabric of the nation. Reflecting on the words of Abraham Lincoln in the dark days leading up to the American Civil War, we need to consider very seriously the question of ‘whether a house divided against itself can stand?’ America is currently appearing too fractured to promote a cohesive, collaborative community committed to a Common Good. Not all Americans wanted it this way but it seems sufficient numbers of us bought the sound bites probably out of desperation. An opportunity...