gracchusdixit

As the nightmare of Donald Trump’s demented presidency drags on, one increasingly painful day at a time, we are constantly confronted by evidence of the fractious polarization of our society: political and informational “bubbles” that not only divide one part of the nation from another but alter their very perceptions of reality; social and economic enclaves that pit haves against have-nots; not merely disagreement, but outright hostility, between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, white Americans and everyone else.

All of this has been made worse by a corrosive cynicism about government and a sweeping distrust of those in charge.  No one is any longer immune from this distrust: not the media; not professional public servants; not even dispassionate and non-partisan scientists.  It is as if our most fundamental principles and norms are coming apart, as if the underpinnings of our civil society are crumbling.

As abnormal as this crisis may sometimes seem, it is by no means a new phenomenon in our public life, nor is it the outcome of the singularly strange presidency of Donald J. Trump.  On the contrary, the “United States of America” have never truly been united.  Our present problems are merely the latest manifestation of deep fissures that have divided us from the very beginning of the republic—fissures that are moral and political, racial and economic, cultural and religious. To imagine that these divisions are in any way new or abnormal is to ignore the awful reality of our history.

Our union was cobbled together by means of a fragile and sulfurous bargain: between those who benefitted from slavery and those who opposed it; between those who defined “freedom” as the right to exploit the land and those who sought to protect it; between those who insisted that states’ rights superseded human rights and those who believed that human rights were universal.  It was only a matter of time before this bargain would begin to come apart.  And it didn’t take long.

A mere 73 years after the Constitution was adopted, the so-called “Confederacy” decided to break our constitutional bargain and secede—a decision solely intended to preserve and expand the cruel institution of slavery.  Four years of almost incomprehensible carnage followed.  At least 600,000 died; countless more were wounded, maimed, and crippled; large swathes of land and property were pillaged and burned.  The slave states were finally brought back into the union—but only by brute force.  They did not come willingly, nor did they ever surrender their self-righteous sense of victimhood.

The Civil War was followed by the era of Reconstruction, which sought to undo the legacy of slavery.  That effort was brought to a halt in 1877, when Southern politicians regained their hold over Congress.  Thereafter, an unrepentant South used the institution of “Jim Crow” to reestablish the status quo antebellum.  Chattel slavery was no longer the law of the land, but the de facto suppression of black Americans was reinstated.  Legalized segregation took the place of slavery.

To be black in the South became, once again, not only demeaning and dehumanizing, but dangerous.  Between 1877 and 1950, at least 4,000 black citizens of this country—men, women, and children—were lynched by mobs of white racists.  These innocent people were lynched without regard for law or due process, justice or common decency.  They were murdered, simply because they were black and because the law had been perverted to protect their murderers.

You may be asking yourself what all this has to do with our current predicament.  The answer is:  Everything.  What divides us today is precisely the same set of prejudices that has divided us for nearly three hundred years.

The white, Christian, heterosexual Americans, who live in the so-called “heartland” and voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, believe themselves to be uniquely privileged.  They see themselves as the sole embodiment of what it means to be “American”.  In their view, the rest of us—brown or black; Muslim or Jew, Hindu or Sikh, agnostic or atheist; gay or transgender or simply ambivalent—are suspicious “others,” who must be rejected, suppressed, or expelled.

The problem, of course, is these “others” are on the verge of becoming a majority of the population.  Which means that Trump voters may soon lose the privileged status to which they believe themselves to be uniquely entitled.  This is what accounts for their primordial and visceral anger against cosmopolitan elites, the press, and liberals in general, who not only tolerate but celebrate such a transformation.  What unites Trump voters, and separates them from the rest of us, isn’t a slavish adoration of Donald Trump himself (though there is plenty of that); it is their rabid hatred of anyone who threatens their privileged status.

We are, as we have always been, a divided and conflicted nation, and there is no way to sugarcoat that awful reality.  Fundamental questions continue to divide us— questions of right and wrong, of prejudice versus tolerance, of decency versus evil.  Little more than 150 years ago, we fought a bloody and calamitous civil war to settle these questions.  It failed in that purpose.  Here we are, 150 years later, divided again.  Whether we stand or fall remains an open question.