The message of our government shutdown - the one mostly for show - is a perfect profile of our country.
We're an unruly family of jealous and biting siblings, constantly picking fights for someone's - anyone's - dramatic attention.
David Brooks, a right-leaning New York Times columnist, on Monday wrote: "It's fitting that we had a government shutdown over the issue of immigration. Racially tinged conflict has been the defining feature of the Trump era. Most of the outrage has been caused by the president picking at the nation's wounds. But by now both parties have racial identity wings, which believe that political life is inevitably a power competition between identity groups. Both parties build their coalitions by magnifying racial identity and exploiting racial difference."
It is easy to pin this on race. Just look at us. Just listen to us. Our president, the so-called leader of the free world, just this month decried immigration from "s***hole" countries like Haiti and those in Africa. He asked why we couldn't get more immigrants from countries like Norway.
After all, race gives us something instantly identifiable: black, white, brown, red, yellow. Those outward skin colors are easier to see than values, heart, understanding, goals - those things we all have, no matter what we look like on the outside.
To Brooks' thinking (and our wish), this nation's political leaders - no matter what their party colors - would, like caring parents, get beyond those exterior body hues to nurture this unruly family toward to a more perfect union.
But it seems America - or at least many of its current elected leaders - can never quite get past the original sins of immigrant tribalism and, of course, slavery.
Almost all Americans are American because our parents, grandparents or earlier ancestors immigrated here - some in bondage and against their will.
As time went by, they and their children and grandchildren were like the Dreamers: This was the only home and country they'd ever known. But now Dreamers, the nearly 800,000 mostly Hispanic and Latino undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, face deportation from the only home they've ever known because President Donald Trump has cluelessly moved to end the 2012 Obama-era program known as DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
To have obtained DACA status, these young people must have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012, when the program began. They must have arrived in the U.S. before turning 16 and lived here continuously since June 2007. They had to come forward to admit they were undocumented and agree to be vetted for any criminal history or threat to national security. They must be students or have completed school or military service. When they passed vetting, the government agreed to defer for two years any action to deport them, and give them a chance to renew their DACA status, which makes them eligible for basics like a driver's license, college enrollment or a work permit.
Here is the ah-ha moment: An overwhelming percentage of Americans - 87 percent (even 79 percent of Republicans) - favor allowing immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children to stay, according to a mid-January CBS News poll. That means it is our president and Congress who can't get to unity on this - not the rest of us.
And the rest of us want politicians to stop dithering with biases in order to wave party power and hold government function hostage. The same CBS poll respondents who favor DACA were far less sure a government shutdown to resolve what should be reasonable debate was worth the risk: 46 percent said it was, 48 percent said it wasn't.
Trump helped incite this absurd food fight with his sometimes support and sometimes opposition to DACA and the Dreamers, depending on who last had his ear - wingnut GOPers who ridiculously call DACA "amnesty," or the more moderate and far-sighted Republicans (and Democrats) who see the value of human beings in their actions and potential rather than their complexions and national origin.
On Monday, Senate Democrats made a deal with Republicans to reopen the government and fund it for three weeks - on a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring a DACA fix before the March deadline.
Democrats are taking McConnell at his word - which frankly doesn't amount to much. McConnell made the same promise to Jeff Flake in December to win his vote for tax legislation.
Understandably, some Democrats are furious with their party leaders for "caving."
Some Republicans are disappointed, too. They wanted the Democrats to drag out the shutdown and drag down America's support for the the Dreamers and Democratic resistance. They are disappointed the family row didn't rise to the level of self-immolation for the Democrats - the kind of political backlash Republicans suffered when Ted Cruz and friends shut down the government and still failed to make Democrats vote to repeal Obamacare.
The bottom line is that the buck stops with us ordinary voters. As long as we elect people of any party who categorize and manipulate our nation by color and ancestral origin, "America the Land of Opportunity" has no opportunity.
Any America without opportunity for diversity and drive has no heart. Any America without heart has no future.
Vote. Midterms are less than a year away.