Is the United States a myth?

The United States feels that it is disintegrating; Not just because of a toxic election season, or a national crisis over race, unemployment and hunger in a land of opportunity, or a pandemic that kills tens of thousands each month. The foundation of our nation suffers from deep cracks, perhaps much more than the ability to repair it in the short term, or not at all (…). Anger is consuming many in America, and it may get worse after the election and over the next four years, regardless of who wins. Our political and cultural fissures have generated growing doubts about the stability of a country that has long been considered a paradise, a model and an exception to the rest of the world (…).

“The idea that the United States has a common past that dates back to the colonial period is a myth,” Colin Woodward, author of The Union: The Struggle to Make America’s Nation History, told me. “We are different Americans, each with stories of origin and a set of values, many of which are incompatible. It led to the outbreak of a civil war in the past, and is likely to be an incendiary force in the future. ”
Today’s crisis reflects the history of the nation. Apparently not much has changed. Various cultures settled in the country: the Purges in New England, the Dutch around New York City, the Appalachians, who were predominantly Scottish-Irish, and the English slave princes of Barbados and the West Indies in the Deep South. They were often opponents, Woodward notes … The United States was largely a “historic accident,” because different cultures shared an external threat from the British. (…) After nearly 250 years, a country six times its original size claims to be a melting pot of “American” culture and a political system that is committed to providing “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” . Often this does not happen.
Centuries later, cultural divisions and fissures are still deep. Three hundred and thirty million people can define themselves as Americans, but they define what that means, and the rights and responsibilities that come with it, in very different ways. The American promise was unfulfilled for many blacks, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, countless immigrant groups, and even some whites. Hate crimes (acts of violence against people or property based on race, religion, disability, sexual or ethnic orientation) are a growing problem. In August, a bipartisan group in the House of Representatives warned that “amid growing uncertainty, we have seen hatred take off.”
When Athens and Sparta went to war in the fifth century BC, the Greek general and historian Thucydides noted that “the Greeks no longer understand each other, although they speak the same language.” In the 21st century, the same is true for Americans. Our political discourse turned into a “civil war by other means.” It seems as if we really don’t want to remain members of a country, “wrote Richard Kretner, in his recently published book” Deconstruct it: The Separation, Division, and the Secret History of the Imperfect Union of America. “At different times in history For the United States, the Union’s survival resulted as much from “luck and chance” as from flag-waving and political will. “At almost every step, it required morally unsustainable concessions that only pushed problems forward.”
The attempt to settle accounts with the past has generated more questions, and new divisions, about our future. In Washington, DC, last week, a group commissioned by Mayor Muriel Bowser recommended in a report that her office ask the federal government to “remove or relocate” the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Monument, and the Benjamin Franklin and Christopher statues. Colón, among others. The committee created a list of people whose public works should not be named, including Presidents James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the national anthem. After a wave of criticism, Bowser said on Friday that the report had been misrepresented and that the city would not take any action regarding monuments and memorials. But one question remains, not just because we live in an era of “black life issues”: What is America today? Is it different from your deeply flawed past?
Since the 1830s, the United States has experienced a series of crises that threatened its cohesion. The idea of ​​a revolutionary republic committed to equality (at that time, only for white men) began to erode, with regional differences emerging and the first generation of revolutionaries disappearing. States or regions repeatedly pushed for independence …
Wide divisions threatened, once again, to cause the disintegration of the nation in the 1930s and 1960s, “and now again?” As Yale University historian David Blight told me. Today the United States is full of proud separatist movements. And in a reflection of “Brexit”, Britain’s exit from the European Union, they are calling for “Text” (Texas), “Calexet” (California) and “Verexet” (Vermont) (…).
The need for internal trade and the risks of external threats helped hold the United States together. The different factions met in the country to face British aggression in the 18th and 19th centuries; Germans and Japanese in the 20th century; And al-Qaeda after the attacks of September 11 of the 21st century. But now, without external threats, the nation is increasingly turning against itself. “We are definitely not monotheists,” Blight said. Are we on the verge of some kind of break? No, not in the literal sense. But within our minds and our societies, we are already in a period of separation that develops slowly ”(…). “America today is a house divided on what keeps it standing,” added Blight.
In his new book, Kretner argues that, with its politics largely shattered, America is running out of time. The possibility of a physical or political separation is now real, despite the fact that polarization in the United States has no precise geographic boundaries: no red state is completely like that, nor a blue state that is completely blue. “The 21st century has seen an unequivocal resurgence of the idea of ​​leaving or dismantling the United States. A variety of separatist movements shaped by the conflicts and divisions of the past have manifested themselves in new ways and can be destabilizing, ”Kretner writes. In contrast to the past, today’s separatist impulses appeared in multiple places simultaneously. “Often (the idea) is rejected on the grounds that it is not serious or imaginative, but the return (of speaking of) Confederacy and the new separatism reveals divisions in American life, perhaps no less difficult than those that led to the first civil war, “warns Crittner.
In the coming years, the appeal of stopping the American experiment is likely to grow, even among believers loyal to the idea of ​​federal authority. As Kretner writes, if the federation is dissolved again, it will be “everywhere, once”. In some respects, the elections that are only eight weeks away will be a temporary relief, at least to end the current painful uncertainty, but they will only play part of the role in deciding what will ultimately happen in our nation. Are we a fairy tale? Well yes, in the deepest sense of the word. We’ve always been like this, ”Blight said. To survive, the United States must overcome the myth.
(“The New Yorker” – Robin Wright)

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