There was a time, not so long ago, and certainly not so far away, when America stood as one in the eyes of history and the world, and mostly, in the eyes of itself.
We stood for, and mostly embodied, equal opportunity and equality under the law. Yes, we never fully lived up to it, but we aspired to it.
Or at least most of us told ourselves we did. And that was our message, fully achieved or not, that we told the world.
No one needs to be told that we have given up on that vision.
It was too long of a reach, and too much work.
And some of us, it turns out, never wanted to do it anyway.
So we chose our patron saint of division and outward (and inward) hostility, Donald J. Trump.
With theatric flair, he brought us what many of us seem to have wanted all along; an America united by its divisions.
With his bombastic style he emphasized divisions and created those not yet visible. We had a digital divide, and a destructive economic system based on income inequity, but thanks to him we now have pronounced generational divides, racial divides, urban and rural, and many more along fractures many us never knew existed.
Our streets, our courts and our family conversations are aflame, sometimes literally, with blame, rage and incrimination.
You can feel these as you pass from neighborhood to neighborhood.
We once lived under one flag and one code, but now false flags fly from our homes and in our conspiracy theories.
In a more innocent age, Barack Obama, at his victory speech in 2008 stated “Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America.”
In Trump’s America we are not “united” and we don’t want to be.
In Trump’s America we have claimed our territory and our privileges and we do not want to share.
We have become a fiercely red and blue, black and white, rich and poor, male and female America. An America barely recognizable to almost any of us. A place where virtually none of us feels welcome. Or safe.
Our history, once a refuge of idealism and based on the wisdom and, borderline-inspired justice, honesty and vision of our Founding Fathers, has become a quagmire booby-trapped with hypocrisy and vindictiveness.
A physical (or even metaphorical line) like the Mason-Dixon line, or a civil war over a single issue, like slavery or state’s rights, seems almost naïve and simplistic.
Now we have explosive issues under every word, every meal, every phrase and certainly behind, or embedded in, every conversation and topic.
In Trump’s America, the America almost every one of us has helped build, is a nation of distrust, blame and projection where none of us is safe, none of us belong, and fewer and fewer of us can literally live.
Our news bubbles cannot save us, our tribes will not save us, our conspiracy theories, no matter how loony or convincing will not save us.
It might seem hollow, if not sarcastic now, but we really will only live, we will only prosper, in a “united” state.
And the question before us is very simple, do we want more of the division and animosity or could we ever, tentatively, naively edge our way back to a belief, if not the full reality of a nation united under ideals of equality and opportunity?
Again, the answer is, only if we want to.
And like everything around us, the answer is far from clear.
Our historic enemies rejoice in our divisions — as do many of us.
Our fragmentation, like the collapse of a glacier or a massive arctic ice sheet, is exhilarating to behold.
But sometimes the whirling vortex in its wake sucks us under.
And then the blame, like a human virus, takes over and defines us yet again in the image of the Trump-man we have created.
Our economic “recovery” unlike the familiar “V” shape (a dip and then a plateau) is “K” shape — with one arm pointed up, and one pointed down. Some prospering and many, thanks to unemployment and eviction, facing homelessness and financial ruin. All within the context of the worst pandemic in a century.
Even Mr. Trump could not have staged it better.
A crisis within a catastrophe, circling and amplifying with each turn, each new day, each new scandal and each new element taking us along for the ride.
And yet there are those who want to turn up the speed, crank up the volume.
“It ain’t over ’til it’s over” is the theme we are living out.
There was a time, it seems like centuries ago, when each generation took it as its assumption or even sacred duty, that the following generation would be better off.
That’s not even punchline to a joke in 2020.
Our baseline assumption now is that the apocalypse is upon us, and for some it can’t come soon enough.
One unique area of agreement is our need for a vaccine. But whether that vaccine is for a virus, racism or for humanity itself is the question each one of us must decide.
