Woman who climbed the identified Statue of Liberty, faces federal charges

As I enjoyed a series of neighborhood celebrations of American Independence on July 4th, I kept thinking of an issue that
I had been asked earlier in the week on Facebook – this is a question that I was asked more than anyone else in my
thirty years as a reporter in Washington, DC, and something like this is happening: "Is this the most divided you've ever seen
United States?"

I've been watching politics since I was a kid. My dad told me how I kept track in the Chicago Seven newspaper
trial. I watched the hearings of the Watergate while I should have been out playing baseball. I've been reporting since D.C.
Reagan administration.

My answer is always – no, it's not the most divided that our country has been, even in my lifetime.

Yes, now, under the administration of President Donald Trump, there are loud voices on both sides. There is
bitter exchanges on social media. The president systematically denounced the media, even calling us "enemy" of the
people.

Things were bitter in the Obama administration. They were not exactly calm in the Bush years. I remember people telling me
it was Reagan's "worst" in terms of partisanship.

This always seemed to be "worse" than before, according to the opinion of others

But these badessments have left me puzzled, because of what this country went through when I Was young.

Look at this photo montage that was set up with the old song Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, "Ohio," about the
four students killed by National Guard troops at the Kent State University in 1970.

Are we this point? Yes, we have protests – the most recent about the president's separation from illegal immigrant parents
and the kids – but what's happening in 2018 is far from what was happening on the streets of America from 45 to 50 years
since.

Maybe we'll come back to this in a few years and I'm wrong about this badessment – maybe we're on a tip
point where political differences begin to rage in public as they did in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Or perhaps we will look back and realize that our politics have often seemed full of division and peril, but that one way or another,
the United States continues to dive, though sometimes on an uncertain trajectory.

Yes, many people walk and gather. Yes, we have many people expressing their satisfaction and dissatisfaction
with the current president and his policies, both foreign and national.

But does this appear to the social upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s – the combination of changes in civil rights,
plus the firestorm on the Vietnam War?

Cities do not burn. University campuses are not rocked by violence. There are no mbad confrontations in the streets. The
These are not signs hanging from college dormitories that say, "They can not kill us all.

At my local 4th of July neighborhood parade and park picnic, I listened to the music of a singer / guitarist
play for the crowd, listen to a message about where are now.

A few years ago, at the same event, a young woman took over the words of an old Janis Joplin song that caught my attention:
"Freedom is just another word for nothing to lose."

This time, the singer came back for an old Buffalo Springfield song written by Stephen Stills, "For what's worth it", which
is perhaps better known for the chorus, "Stop, kids, what's this sound, everybody's watching what's going on."

Do we hear this type of protest songs today? Not what I hear on the radio. Not what I see in the streets

Do I think it's the "worst partisan"? No. We started with federalists and anti-federalists. And if you think
that America has been running with one voice since 1776, you have not read your story very well, especially in congressional halls.

In April 1968 – fifty years ago – my father was standing on the steps of the United States Capitol and watching neighborhoods burn in the
the riots that followed the badbadination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a spasm of violence that has marked sections of the city
for decades.

Fortunately, we are not there in 2018.

The United States of America find a way forward.

I remain relentlessly optimistic about our country – even if things can

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