(I'll give away the answer in advance, in case you can't figure it out: Not without Jesus Christ.)
More than at any time in my life, there is a split between two portions of the United States population. Approximately two-thirds of the adult-acting citizenry of the fifty states et al are of a mindset that the most valuable thing this country owns is its Constitution and its founding principles; that this country is greater than the sum of its parts; that progress means inclusion; that our representative democracy is only as worthy as it is usable by its weakest and poorest citizens; and most importantly for this conversation, that what our noble men and women of the military have fought and died to protect the idea and reality of a nation founded on a Constitution which guarantees its citizens certain inalienable basic rights - in the current case, the right to peaceably protest issues within our own borders.
Meanwhile, there exists right alongside those folks the other approximately one-third of our citizenship who are of a mode of thought that the country has been weakened by its zealousness for inclusion; that the most valuable thing in this nation is its flag and what it represents to them; that our democracy is only as valuable as the rights it maintains for its citizens; that what the noble men and women of the finest military in the world have fought and died to protect is very simply the United States of America, plain and simple; and that in the current situation, anyone who has the audacity to use a position of visibility to promote a personal opinion that contradicts the self-evident notion that this is the greatest nation on the face of the earth is at best to be shunned and at worst a traitor to the country they claim to love.
The current debate regarding the kneeling of a few professional football players during the national anthem is an issue that (with the fire starter, Colin Kaepernick, not even playing in the NFL right now) should have been a non-issue but for the off-hand remarks of our President at a campaign rally in a state that ironically has no NFL team! (Though the Crimson Tide is close...) As is his wont, Mr. Trump made incendiary remarks on a topic that was frankly beneath his attention (while North Korea simmers and Puerto Rico drowns), but also as usual he chose a topic which he must have known would further widen the divide between the two Americas: the one who worships the flag, and the one that worships the Constitution.
Both sides believe they are the patriotic ones, and that the other side simply fails to show the respect for the idol of the first side's choosing.
There are Christians on both sides, and I'll wager good, saved Christians on both sides (hopefully none of whom are on the most flammable outcroppings of the battle). In the interest of fairness, I feel the need to admit that I belong to the 2/3 who recognizes the kneeling at the presentation of the colors as a right protected by the First Amendment, and that the calls for firings of anyone disagreeing with those protests are unconstitutional under a 1943 ruling which cites the United States Flag Code itself.
But that's a side point as far as today's article goes. I won't go into all the rest of the arguments on their behalf, except to mention two that amuse me: Mr. Trump himself complained that the POTUS had no right to tell the NFL how to run their business (in 2013), and the practice of a team standing or even being present for the flag salute only started in 2009 when the military paid the NFL to begin implementing these increased ceremonies for their benefit in a time of waning recruitment. All that's an aside. (And I WILL stand by a sponsor's right not to renew a player's endorsement contract, since that's not tied to his vocation. Cancelling is unclear, as that may be interpreted in court as a contract of employment, but non-renewal? Absolutely!)
The point I want to make, however, is this: we as a nation are at an impasse on so many fronts, and the split is virtually identical in every situation. The one-third of the nation which believes that supporting this specific president is the most fundamentally important action they can undertake is at an absolute loggerheads with the two-thirds who believe this specific president is the worst resident of the White House in our history. Those who wonder whether Special Counsel Muller will bring impeachment charges on his violations of the emoluments clause, the ties to Russian interference with the election, or his obstruction of justice, are at odds with those who see the entire investigation as a "witch hunt" born of political intrigue. There's a 180-degree distance between those who see the suppression of certain Constitutional rights as a necessary evil to battle disruptive problems building in the fabric of our nation and those who believe that those rights are so fundamental to our identity as a nation that no reason should ever suppress them. ("If we suspend the Constitution, then the terrorists have won.")
More than the divide between those who call themselves Christians and the true Christians in this country, this "red/blue" chasm threatens to rip the fabric of the United States apart.
Just as God intended it to.
Had we elected Hilary Clinton president, this divide would never have come to the front burner (but it would still have been there). Had we elected our first female president, she would have been "Obama lite" - a continuation of the previous administration's policies, to a certain extent: a status quo. Had we not elected Mr. Trump, we would have had a Democratic POTUS and a Republican Congress, and an even more drastic impasse than Mr. Obama ever faced. Government would have been at a complete standstill, and we would have accepted it as the way things were supposed to be.
Now, the devastating collapse of our governing system has been exposed. The ever-widening gap between the MAGAs and the #notmypresidents is no longer hidden in plain sight.
And one of two things will happen.
Either our nation will indeed rip itself to shreds over this (imagine the reaction of the one-third when the current POTUS is impeached and most likely removed from office when the special counsel finishes dotting his i's and crossing his t's. There have already been threats of civil war.) or we will find a way to heal - to come together as one nation, to realize that our differences are ones of methodology, not national pride.
When Mr. Trump was elected, I thought perhaps this was God's punishment to America for the sins of our culture. It's almost impossible to deny that the circumstances leading to his election were very specific and at best 'peculiar' - no strong Republican candidates (no McCain, not even a Romney) but such a large field that the conventional vote was spread out and overwhelmed by the anti-establishment vote given to Trump; the weakest Democratic candidate in recent history (can you imagine Mr. Obama or Mr. Clinton having lost an election to him?), no viable third-party candidates in the one year that lent itself perfectly to a successful third-party run. It was Planned from the start.
Now, I think that this is God's test of America. We are not a necessary part of the End Times script - nowhere in Scripture does "a nation from across the sea" or any such phrase appear in eschatology. But God in His Mercy has given the United States a chance to survive. We have the opportunity to save our nation if we have the courage to make the effort.
How?
By listening to the directives of Jesus Christ, Who told us that Love was more important than anything else. By caring more for others than ourselves. By listening to the "other side" instead of treating them like the enemy - they, too, are patriots!
We will have to find a way to come together as a nation. And that will be as difficult as it was after the Civil War - I truly believe this! - because it's the same racism, the same us-them thought process that existed then and never went away. Slavery was abolished in the 1860s, but the denigration of the non-white citizenry never waned - in fact, they were resented all the more as the cause of their defeat, of what they saw as their embarrassment and destruction.
That resentment is still there, 150 years later. And that's what we have to overcome.
But WE WILL OVERCOME, through the glory of Christ's Love.
Or we will be destroyed.
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