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The Great Divide Among Us:
I apologize in advance for the extreme simplification of complex ideas and will provide a syllabus of suggested readings to anyone requesting it wishing to follow the steps and leaps in the following explication.
When the founders of this nation were discussing the form of government it could have, they analyzed other forms of governments that had failed. The one that they wanted to emulate, the republic, had repeatedly failed. But they argued that those were “small” Republics (Greece, Rome) whereas the United States would be a “large” republic. They argued further that the failure of small republics was due to something they called factions; namely, strife over family origin and rank, religion, ethnicity, history, language, skin color, sex, class, etc. They argued that two points of correction would ameliorate the defects of a small republic: first, all (or at least all white men who were Christian) would be equal, and that strife would be economic strife in the marketplace; second, the separation of church and state would prevent the encroachment of the issues that can arise from one group arguing that they are right and another is not because their understanding of a deity told them so. Hence, they were convinced that a large republic could succeed where small republics had failed.
Somehow we managed to muddle through our founding with this notion working, despite the development of something the Founders hadn’t contemplated, the political parties, which were, after all, factions that initially argued over things like a national bank and the structure of the economic system, but ultimately have taken positions on all manner of things that the Founders probably would likely have taken exception. The Civil War was a major test of many of the tenets of those founders’ Constitution. Armed conflict settled the battle, but the war over even whether all non-white men were equal is an issue still today, given the very public rise of the neo-Nazis and the various Aryan groups. Having just spent 15 years in the South, I learned that the Civil War is still described by some as the War of Northern Aggression.
Women became somewhat equal when they won the right to vote. But the issue of whether they are equal in work compensation and equally responsible for their bodies remains today an open battle. Please note that the issue of whether non-white men are considered citizens and voters was itself created by a faction: namely, our founders. Similarly, the extension of voting to minorities in the USA didn’t really gain serious currency until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s (and the corresponding “go back to where you came from” argument at the same time), language still repeated today to persons who speak any language in public other than English.
I believe three events in the 1960’s started the US careening from a country in which we had just successfully worked together as one nation that sacrificed together to win WW2 into the complete shambles of a country today in which every issue is argued and seldom are issues compromised. Within a decade of winning WW2 we also distributed the newly discovered polio vaccine throughout the nation at schools and community centers, ending a terrible disease destroying the lives of children and families.
So what were those events? First, it was the addition of “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance. It seemed a minor thing at the time to many of us, since we were all taught from birth that monotheism was right and plural deities were wrong, that manifest destiny and the Monroe Doctrine gave the USA the right to conquer from Atlantic to Pacific and to keep nasty old Europe out of Central and South America. We were of course taught very little about the indigenous peoples we disposed, relocated, or sent to their deaths because of war, disease, starvation, malnutrition, benign neglect, alcoholism, substandard education and housing, etc. If “God blessed America” was true, how could we not put “under God” into our oath?
Second, it was our intellectual migration from creating compromise to govern for the greater good (which I believe culminated with Eisenhower’s presidency) to one issue politics which continues to this day. We must ban the bomb, or not. We must find the commies, or not. We must allow women to choose about having a baby or not: let’s not forget that, before the right to abortion there was also a battle over birth control pills. We must risk children’s lives so a few antivaxxers can let their children spread measles, or not. We must recognize no one as equal different from our appearance, beliefs, origin, behavior, or not.
So we began to choose our friends by virtue of whether they were with us or against us over these one issue ideas. It was a slow and steady drip-drip-drip of the loss of the ability for parties in Congress to work together for the common good to today, when the common good has to do with one party or the other’s notion of what it should be, not what we can all agree it might be. We no longer, for example, appoint just good judges; we must appoint those that will uphold our opinions, right or wrong, over your opinions, which, of course, are all wrong. We lost the ability to have civil conversations with each other, made even worse by the internet, Fox News, Facebook, the dumbing down of our education system to teach not thinking but rather passing tests, to students who can graduate from excellent colleges and universities today not knowing American history, basic math, how to detect a true from a false argument, a rudimentary knowledge of science and the scientific method, etc. We even have abandoned the notion of public education, supporting factions to pull their children out of a common education system to allow those factions to indoctrinate their little factoid clones.
And third, beginning with Richard Nixon, in order to be successful prosecuting his race for the presidency, the Republicans of the time developed a Southern strategy which involved turning the “Blue Dog” Democrats in the South into quasi Republicans by appealing to their racism. Those early evangelical churches which Billy Graham presented to are today a dominant force in Republican politics. This was a corollary of the “under God” movement: if we are chosen by God to be Americans born in the USA, let’s ensure that we all believe we are. So we begat home schooling and charter schools, all designed to indoctrinate our children in being separate and chosen.
Acton’s observation that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” applies to the factionalism of our political parties. Once a party has supped at the breast of evangelical voting blocks, it’s hard to go back on a diet. Successive Republican administrations of Reagan, Bush, Bush, and most egregiously of all, Trump, have sucked deeper and deeper from the sweet support of the evangelicals and in the process, destroyed the separation of church and state to the point the churches received financial support during our current crisis, a concept I believe would turn the stomachs of our Founders.
Today we are at an impasse. We hold no coherent common beliefs. We only believe in those aspects of our republic when they support our faction staying in power. We respect our own beliefs but not those that don’t agree with ours. We value successful rich men over good men and women, good mothers and good fathers. We no longer even give lip service to listening to the other side. Evangelical Christianity does not turn its other cheek; it’s about to take down the enemies of its truth. We quote the Bible or the Constitution only in the areas where it supports our own point of view. We believe every kooky idea we hear or we read on the internet or are sent on Twitter. We aren’t required to study a common core and to learn anything like logic, so we have created a nation of highly informed specialists on how to connect to the internet but not to recognize a fallacy from a truthful argument. We hold scientific facts as opinions. We are a country founded on the principle that we will be different from all those that preceded us in a new hemisphere with abundant resources but by virtue of our failure to respect beliefs and opinions other than our own, we continue to argue and bicker as the factions fight for dominance in a manner as egregious as the Europe from which our founders came, creating an America as depleted of resources as the Mediterranean is of fish.
Can we fix this? Can we restore a modicum of respectful conversation where we don’t treat persons who disagree with our own opinions about the course of our nation as enemies of the state to be unfriended on Facebook and ignored in person? Or will we watch in horror as the election in November does or doesn’t occur, as we enter a state of emergency with the Congress sent home and the nation run by the current executive and his family in perpetuity, or will we see the party not in power win the election but the party currently in power not acknowledge and refuse to leave, or will we see the presidency regained by the party out of power but a legislature afraid to tackle the tough issues that could end this ongoing friction, or will we see armed civil rebellion (we have already during this viral crisis seen armed bullies threaten sitting elected officials doing the jobs they were elected to do), or will we have another uncivil war?
To fix the current situation requires a type of leadership and courage I don’t see much in evidence. The current Republican party has accepted every assault on the separation of powers by this president with only an occasional objection. The reason they don’t complain is that they are getting everything they have wanted to get for the last 50 years in these four years: a reversal of the type of appointments to the judiciary, a reduction in environmental and civil protections, a reduction in the right to free speech, a funding of religions in opposition to the tenets of our founding fathers, etc.
If no one bucks this failure of moral courage, then I believe we face the end of this experiment in a large republic, and we can answer the question raised by our founders with a resounding proof that a large republic cannot succeed where small republics have failed. We could end the next decade with a fascist dictatorship run by a single family who are no more benign that the leaders they admire: Putin and the Family Kim, or not. And we will have lost a country which could have respected all persons regardless of race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc. where all could have had the right to an education, to healthcare, to marry or not, to have or not have children, and to die with dignity regardless of religious beliefs governing those issues.
There is an old adage about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. An optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is afraid that it is. And at this point in time, watching my fellow citizens disagree about the common steps necessary to protect the health of every American because it infringes on their right to be stupid, I am very afraid.
Copyright 2020 by Gary A. Knight
Gary is a citizen of Las Cruces. To learn more about him click here >>