"It's funny that it's called the United States 'cause all the states hate each other."

 

 A few days ago, my older son – a middle school teacher – overheard this comment by one of his students.  "It's funny that it's called the United States 'cause all the states hate each other."  My son later observed that his “7^th graders were in 1^st grade during the 2016 election.  This America is all they know.” 

The student's observation brought to mind the 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address from then-State Senator Barack Obama, in which he asserted that “[T]here is not a Liberal America or a Conservative America.  There is the United States of America."  https://youtu.be/eWynt87PaJ0 (beginning at 13:04).  The speech is worth listening to 18 years later.

 

Four years after the 2004 speech, 53% of the American voters chose the path Obama offered.  He won reelection with a majority of the vote in 2012.  And his Vice President won with a majority of the vote in 2020. 

 

There are two visions of America. The Obama vision and the Trump vision.  But it is not a new clash of visions. A similar clash between the visions of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln dominated America in the 19^th Century.  

At the moment, it appears that 40% + of the voters only want what they think is a “Conservative” America (whatever that means anymore), and support Trump regardless of the facts – to a great degree because they are in an information bubble of “alternative facts.”  

 

Given the threats to majority rule (and now even the Rule of Law) posed by vagaries of the malapportioned Electoral College, the malapportioned Senate, the partisan gerrymandering (blessed by the McConnell Supreme Court) which enables Republicans to control State Legislatures (and thus apportionment of House seats) regardless of the preferences of a majority of voters, and our information bubbles, the next years will be a test of whether we can  be the United States of America. 

 

I recognize that the American Dream of  “E pluribus unum” – out of many, one – in a democratic and just society is an aspiration that it is difficult to achieve, as the poet Langston Hughes reminded us in his poem Let America Be America Again.
  https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again

 

But Obama’s 2004 DNC speech is a reminder of what America can be.  We can never succumb to the fear that it is impossible.