The Daily Escape:
Easter Sunday, Great Smokey Mountains NP – April 2023 photo by Melissa Russell
We’re back from our roughly 2,200 mile journey to Gettysburg PA, St. Augustine FL, and Charleston SC. The focus of our trip was visiting with family, and it didn’t disappoint. We saw about 40 family members in the three locations. Most are healthy and thriving, and there was lots of laughter.
But we also saw slices of different cultures than what we’re used to here in Connecticut. Wrongo wonders if the US has ever been as divided as it is now?
Yes we’ve been divided in the past, most notably before and during the Civil War. American schools still teach the Civil War to our kids, although like everything else, views on what it was fought about differ largely by geography and political leaning.
Between 1861-1865, we killed our fellow Americans at a prodigious rate, with about 620,000 dying. In fact, Americans killed more other Americans in that war than all of our adversaries did in eight of our wars combined: the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Gulf Wars. The Civil War stands alone when it comes to America being divided deeply enough that we killed each other in astonishing numbers.
The Civil War was about one issue: Slavery.
In today’s America, we’re fighting about everything: Gun control, abortion, climate change, fossil fuels, drilling, the environment, immigration, refugees, diversity, voting rights, elections, women’s rights, policing, who gets tax cuts, health care, LGBTQ+ rights, health care for transgender kids, bathrooms, books, what’s taught in classrooms, COVID-19, vaccines, poverty, welfare, unions, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, student debt, Trump, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and education.
These modern divisions exist without exception in every state. They are fought over with words, and occasionally, with weapons. They are fought about in our courts. Some on the political Right call for secession. In 2021, the University of Virginia Center for Politics released the results of a poll that found the majority of the individuals who voted to reelect Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections hoped that their state could secede from the Union.
“Hoping” isn’t doing something to make secession happen, although it’s a first step.
What’s worrisome is that like before the Civil War, there doesn’t seem to be a pathway forward to a common cause. Wrongo has written about “The Cause, The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783” by Joseph Ellis. It says that the founders had to create a blurry vision of the revolution because colonists were suspicious of the motives of other colonies. So the founders described their fight for independence as “The Cause”, an ambiguous term that covered diverse ideas and multiple viewpoints.
It succeeded in unifying us against the British.
Maybe America’s now reached a point where it’s possible that nothing will ever unite us again. Instead, we yell at each other across a chasm of ideological and political partisanship.
Our global reputation has sunk: We’re seen as an undereducated, and unhealthy nation. Many of us want our political opponents dead, while admiring the world’s autocrats. We’re tolerant of the gun slaughter of our children, and callous about the plight of our neighbors, especially if they are poor, sick, or different.
The annual World Happiness Report, based on data from Gallup’s World Poll of 24 developed nations, shows that Americans, when asked to evaluate their current life as a whole, are less content than the citizens of 14 other wealthy countries.
It’s worth noting that most of the countries whose citizens are happier than ours have governments that provide their residents with a sense of safety and security, a foundation on which their people can build a fulfilling life and an optimistic future. They can get treated for medical problems. They can afford life-saving medicine. They don’t fall into medical bankruptcy.
Their life expectancies are longer than ours and rising; America’s is falling.
They value higher education enough to provide it for free. They value families enough that their maternal care, both before and after birth, is outstanding. The US should be ashamed of our maternal mortality rate, which is higher than almost any other country, developed or not, in the world.
We desperately need to find a new “Cause” to bind us together.
Benjamin Franklin famously remarked at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that we had formed a republic if we could keep it.
We must get prepared both mentally and in our guts, to fight to keep this country together – AND to keep it a representative democracy.
The alternative looks horrendous.
Despite e everything, I believe that if threatened by dissolution, we all will come together to stand and overcome. Scientific advances will also be able to fix our food problems as well as energy and, I hope, the environmental challenges that face us all ( and pur children and grands).
I was in a hospital waiting room in Denville NJ – a well off town in well off Morris County (so white and suburban and Trumpy). I was waiting while my wife had an MRI (she is 14 months past a diagnosis of cancer so lots of tests). The TV had FOX news on. Two segments featured the following headlines. The first was that Biden was not treating the recent military secrets leak as serious and the second was of how Dems were leaving Democratic cities because of Liberal policies. This represented mid-day news for about an hour. Nothing about what happened in Tennessee, nothing about the abortion issue.
We are divided not because of Democratic policies nor even bc of Democratic voters. We are divided bc of a decades long effort to create wedge issues for the GOP to run on.
This AM I was listening to NPR and they had a segment on about a man who lends historic instruments to an American orchestra. As anyone who follows music knows, old violins have a unique sound (art least those that are truly great instruments) and these are needed by musicians who cannot buy them themselves – a few do cobble together loans to purchase – but in general this is difficult.
I have an acquaintance – we sing in a choir together. He has a great voice and is a good guitar player. I am sure he would have loved to hear the report. But I know he never listens to NPR.
The MSM cover all of life. Conservative media exist only to keep up the divide.
So for now, we cannot become un-divided.