Why are we hurting ourselves more than our enemies ever could?

An open letter from the outskirts of our nation

By Frank Blas Jr.

There’s a saying: “Don’t waste your bullets on an enemy who keeps shooting themselves in the foot.” Right now, that enemy is us.

We’re told to fear the likes of China, Russia and North Korea. We imagine cyberattacks, spies and invasions. But while we brace for threats from abroad, we ignore the damage we’re doing right here at home, damage that’s deeper, more personal, and far more dangerous.

In just the past year, political violence in the U.S. has surged to levels that feel more like a war zone than a democracy. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while having a dialogue at a college in Utah. Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were fatally shot in Minnesota.

The Pennsylvania governor’s residence was firebombed with Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family inside. Schoolchildren and churchgoers were gunned down. Campaign offices were shot up. Even police officers, firefighters and the CDC headquarters were attacked.

 This isn’t just politics, it’s personal. It’s neighbors turning on neighbors. It’s people who use their freedom not to speak, but to silence. Not to build, but to burn.

What’s most heartbreaking is that this kind of violence isn’t happening in countries with less freedom. In China, dissent is crushed. In Russia, opposition is jailed. And in North Korea, it’s unthinkable. Yet here, in one of the freest nations on Earth, we’re using our rights to tear each other apart.

Why do we think that’s strength? Some say it’s the price of liberty and that open societies are messy. But this isn’t mess, it’s madness. Freedom without compassion becomes cruelty. And cruelty, left unchecked, becomes collapse.

Respect has degraded. Beliefs demonized. And the compromise diminished. While doing so, we’ve chipped away at the very bedrock of our Constitution.

The foundation of our democracy was never built on agreement—it was built on the ability to disagree with dignity. To debate without destruction. To compromise without shame.

But today, we treat compromise as weakness. We treat differences as danger. And we treat each other as enemies.

We fear what other countries might do to us. But no hack from Moscow, no missile from Beijing, no threat from Pyongyang has done what we’ve done and continue to do to ourselves. We’ve made our politics toxic, our streets unsafe, and our institutions targets. We’ve normalized hate, justified violence, and called it freedom. And while we fight each other, our real enemies watch. They don’t need to attack us. We’re doing the job for them.

 If we want to stay strong, we have to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. We have to stop treating each other like enemies. We have to remember that freedom and democracy only works when we use it with care for one another, not hate for each other.

While the level of violence I write about has not been an experience we have had in Guam, I pray that it never happens. Let us be the country we say we are. Let’s be better to each other, before it’s too late.

Frank Blas Jr. is the speaker of the 38th Guam Legislature.