gracchusdixit

The Constitution of the United States begins with the famous phrase, “We the People”.  Those words are now so familiar that we take them for granted, paying scant attention to what they mean.  They are, in fact, deeply problematic, because they beg a fundamental question, the resolution of which has plagued us for more than 200 years.  The question is:  To whom does the phrase, “We the People,” refer?  Which of us, in other words, are entitled to call ourselves Americans?  

Neither the Constitution nor the earlier Declaration of Independence, which also invoked “the people,” answers the question.

Between the two documents, the Declaration was by far the more radical, because it asserted the independence of a nation that did not yet exist.  In pledging “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to pursue an armed rebellion against the British Crown, the 56 men who signed it were committing treason, and they knew it.  

They also knew that such an audacious act required a plausible philosophical rationale to prevent the newly proclaimed “Thirteen United States of America” from becoming a pariah among nations if—and it was very much an “if”—the rebellion managed to succeed.    They grounded their rationale in the assertion that “one people” had the right to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another”.  

The intellectual forebears of the Declaration’s signers were the English political philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.  It was they who promulgated the idea of an implicit “social contract” between those who are governed and those who do the governing.  However, Locke and Hobbes concerned themselves entirely with the rights of individual persons rather than a collective “people,” and they had nothing whatever to say about the right of “one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another”. 

Which brings us back to the question:  Whom did the founders have in mind when they talked about “We the People”?  That they failed to answer this question opened the door to countless competing narratives of what it means to be an American.  

Although the Constitution defines “citizenship” clearly, this has never satisfied right-wing conservatives, who think that being a citizen isn’t good enough to qualify as being a “true American”.  Donald Trump’s speechwriter and alter-ego, Stephen Miller, is the latest and most egregious example of this poisonous point of view.  In his eyes, only white people of European descent qualify.  As reprehensible as Miller is, the evangelicals who populate Trump’s “base” are even worse.  To them, only born-again Christians pass the test.  

Such lunatic notions would be little more than ridiculous, if it weren’t for the fact that a not insignificant chunk of the electorate agrees with them.  Worse yet, they have been bolstered by a fable that has wormed its way insidiously into the public subconscious, to such an extent that it is now taken for granted across the political spectrum and for the most part without objection, even by people who should know better.  

This fable claims that there is a “real America” out there, situated in a mythical “heartland”.  According to this tale, everyone else lives in “coastal bubbles,” chock full of  undeserving interlopers, illegal immigrants, and condescending elites, hostile to or out of touch with the interests of the honest-to-god Americans who inhabit “fly-over country”.   

To the “heartland” fabulists, it does not seem to matter that a rather large majority of Americans live in those “coastal bubbles,” or that they are responsible for most of the country’s economic activity, intellectual energy, and cultural achievements, or that their tax dollars subsidize the “heartland,” helping to keep the so-called “real Americans” who live there from going broke.

My wife and I got a glimpse of this mythic world a couple of weeks ago when we visited friends in Pierre, South Dakota.  We found ourselves, not in the American “heartland,” but in the beating heart of Trump country.  

As someone who knew next-to-nothing about South Dakota, let me say that the physical landscape of the state is nothing less than majestic.  The soaring pinnacles of the Badlands, the looming shadows of the Black Hills, the undulating grasslands and limitless horizons—all are simply breathtaking. 

The human landscape is another matter. 

Sixty-two percent of South Dakotans and 61 of its 66 counties voted for Trump in 2016, and there is no sign that anything different will happen in 2020.  

Although than 300 South Dakota municipalities call themselves “cities,” all but two are smaller than the small town in Connecticut where I live.  The population of the entire state is considerably less than the population of the one Connecticut county in which that small town is located.  

Eighty-six percent of South Dakotans are white, and 79 percent declare themselves to be “Christian”.  Hispanics, African-Americans, and Asians, who comprise almost 40 percent of the nation as a whole, are as rare as unicorns and as unlikely to be seen.  The Jewish population is the smallest in the United States, amounting to fewer than 400 souls.  There is only one mosque to be found in South Dakota’s 77,184 square miles. 

The only dollop of diversity in the state resides in its Native American population.  After 150 years of broken promises, systematic theft, and more than occasional attempts at extermination, the descendants of the once great Sioux Nation are now cooped up in a handful of reservations, where the poverty level is three times the national average and the health statistics would be a scandal even in the most desperate of third world countries.  The only Native Americans we encountered were waiting on tables in a hotel restaurant, where they served carloads of white ranchers in identical straw cowboy hats with what can only be described as sullen subservience.  It was a depressing spectacle.

I have belabored—and no doubt bored—you with these facts and figures for the sole purpose  of posing two questions:  

How is it possible for South Dakota, or any place like it, to present itself as being uniquely “American”?  There is next-to-nothing in the so-called “heartland” that embodies or expresses the sprawling diversity of our country, the rich complexity of our culture, or the sheer energy that makes us who we are.

More importantly, why do we allow such places to exercise a political stranglehold over the fate and fortune of the entire nation?  By what logic do the two Dakotas, with a population less than half  the population of the small state of Connecticut where I reside, have twice the number of Senators and as many votes in the Electoral College?

The true heart of this country does not lie in the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual void of the so-called “heartland”.   The true heart of this country is located, firmly and forever, in the vibrant, chaotic diversity of our great cities and, yes, in the “coastal bubbles,” where countless immigrants from around the world jostle and struggle to make their way, where millions of true Americans—“We the People” one and all—enrich this nation and breathe life into its future.