After the terrorist attack on the United States 19 years ago, French newspaper Le Monde came out with an iconic headline which became a pledge of global solidarity with the stricken USA: “Nous sommes tous Américains” — “We Are All Americans Now”.
That international goodwill has long been squandered by Washington. Worse, looking at a country gripped by protests against police violence and racism and openly bragging of one of the industrial world’s least competent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, America’s enemies rejoice and its friends shake their heads in disbelief.
In any case, an updated headline would now read something like “Thank God We Are Not Americans.”
But it is even worse than that. The truth is that we are no longer Americans either.
Back in 2001, America came together as all of us regardless of color, background or creed felt that it was our common country that had been viciously attacked. That sense of national unity was the foundation of the notion of “post-racial society” — one of the key factors making the election of Barack Obama possible.
Now, less than two decades later, the solidarity is not just gone — it is replaced by an anti-mask movement in the midst of a pandemic, whereby people assert their inherent right to infect their neighbors and kill the elderly, the vulnerable, the minorities, and the first responders among us. And the president of the United States acts as a cheerleader for his “Screw You, My Brother” cult.
We hear every day that “the nation is deeply divided,” but it is a false narrative. There simply is no nation anymore inhabiting this continent-size landmass. E pluribus unum, America’s motto displayed on the Great Seal of the United States, is simply no longer relevant.
For a group of people to come together as a nation they need to share not just a geographic location or a language but a worldview—a certain sense of common reality.
America has always had a very strong sense of national identity, which developed very early after it won independence from Britain. That sense of identity always irritated conservative “blood-and-soil” European ideologues who claimed that its patchwork of ethnic and racial groups simply could not form a coherent nation.
Even during the Civil War, when the South seceded over the issue of slavery, Americans remained one nation. They held differing views of the facts on the ground but the facts themselves were never in dispute. Moreover, both sides upheld the common principles on which the country had been founded, which ultimately allowed the North to preserve the Union once the South had been defeated.
It is a very different story now. It is easy to feel that the country is divided into two mutually exclusive worlds, each with its own set of realities.
Is the coronavirus the worst health crisis in a century which has been criminally mishandled by the Trump Administration or a hoax, a flu-like bug which moreover has been deftly handled by the government?
Is the economy booming like never before with the stock market setting fresh records or is it suffering from the worst unemployment since the Great Depression with millions of ordinary Americans facing hunger?
Are fires in the West and severe storms in the South the result of climate change or is the whole thing a scam by scientists to get more grant money?
Is America newly respected and feared abroad or is it a laughingstock of nations and an object of pity?
Is America in decline or is it the best it has ever been so that our only task is to Keep It Great? Do Black Lives Matter or do Blue Lives? Or All Lives?
Is Trump a draft dodger who disrespected American troops, referred to fallen soldiers as losers and suckers, insulted a Gold Star family and took revenge on military officers who did their duty by blowing a whistle on an impeachable offense by the president and protecting their ship’s crew? Or is Trump the greatest friend of the military?
Who is suffering from the Trump Derangement Syndrome, his supporters, or his opponents?
Trump has been called a divisive president, whereas in reality, he has been the president of one of these two nations. Or, more precisely, he’s been their Leader, Strongman, and Duce. As far as they are concerned he can do no wrong. He can shoot a person on Fifth Avenue—especially if that person is a Democrat.
Trump has been governing as if he were a Red State president, ignoring, or even attacking “Democrats”-run states and cities”. He said last week that all the COVID-19 problems are concentrated in the Blue States — i.e., not in his nation.
Sure enough, half of the population doesn’t consider him their president.
The size of Trump’s nation is set, and makes up about 40% of America’s total population. For them, he’s not a dumb ignoramus but an astute thinker who plays a sophisticated game of multi-dimensional chess which his opponents don’t even understand. He is not a congenital liar, serial adulterer, alleged rapist, and a buddy of Jeffrey Epstein but a flawed man chosen personally by Jesus to do His work. Not a professional swindler but a rich man who gave up his luxury lifestyle for the sake of his country. Not a sucker for various two-bit dictators but an astute Art of the Deal negotiator. Not a traitor personally beholden to Vladimir Putin on whose instructions he is undermining the United States, its government, and its international alliances, but, simply, the best president in history.
Yugoslavia was a nation that splintered along ethnic divisions. “National self-determination” has been a false but effective slogan since the early 19th century, and splintering along ethnic lines has been a way for old nations to die and new ones to emerge.
Putin tried to break up Ukraine along ethnic lines, too, appealing to Russian speakers in the East and South against the Ukrainian majority. It not only failed but turned many ethnic Russians into staunch Unrainian nationalists — at least for now.
Despite the existence of many ethnic groups in the United States, many of whom retain their “old country” identities, the rift in America is not along ethnic lines. And not even racial lines either, even though Trump undoubtedly has courted white supremacists and a majority of whites voted for him in 2016. The splintering of America is taking place on a number of ideological fronts and in this regard, it is more similar to the 1917-22 period in the Russian Empire.
Civil conflicts tend to be especially brutal. Indeed, to kill a sibling and a neighbor you need first to separate yourself from them and work up enough hatred. This process is well under way in America. The right is openly calling for Black Lives Matters “looters” to be killed, with not-so-hidden connivance of the Trump administration. The teenage gunman who murdered two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has been hailed as a hero.
The left meanwhile would like to see unmasked attendees of Trump political rallies catch COVID-19 and snuff it.
Whether or not Joe Biden wins in November will not change matters all that much. The nation has split into two incompatible camps that have very little in common and hate each other’s guts. However, those two camps themselves are splintering into additional mini-nations with agendas and ethos of their own.
This bodes ill for the country’s governability and, already in the short run, for civil peace.
