There are moments where you hear something that just won’t let go of you. It happened to me several years ago while I was mowing the grass and listening to a podcast by The Atlantic. As I went back and forth in our backyard, wiping the sweat from my forehead someone asked the question.
Other than a geographical border, what holds the United States together?
This was during the ‘tranquil’ days of the Obama administration. Even then we were seeing the divisions that have erupted into a literal assault on our nation’s capital. We have legislators calling for their state to succeed from the nation. We have to wonder if Florida and California are living in the same world, let alone country. So the question has to be asked.
Other than a geographical border, what holds the United States together?
Shortly after the inauguration of 2017 a wise person recommended a book, Splinterland by John Feffer. It is a dystopian novel set in 2050 that recounts how the narrator’s world spit apart, including the US. It is one of those books where you wonder if you are reading fiction or prophecy.
I recalled that book when I saw a recent cartoon by Ratt in the Washington Post.
Living in Canada for the past few years I have read about the growing division. I have watched on TV the reports of partisanship seeping into everything from medical news to theology. However observing from afar is different than experiencing it up close and personal.
For the past month I have ventured through the southern US and experienced it. It is as if there are different worlds, different realities. Yeats poem has come to pass.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
In such a world I find myself asking the question about what holds the US together. What happens when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade? (Not ‘if’ but when.). What happens when California decides they aren’t going to play anymore and break away, taking Oregon and Washington with them? What happens when the majority rule is squashed by a few recalcitrant senators, when a state legislature is able to overturn an election they don’t like?
Once upon a time these were the subject of dystopian novels. Now? They are the image of political cartoons, which are that far-fetched!
What holds the US together? It is a question that the world needs answered.