No Longer United: The Slow Descent of the United States of America

Recent events in the United States of America have prompted a great deal of reflection upon the whole notion of being united. Merriam-Webster defines united as “made one: COMBINED; relating to or produced by joint action; being in agreement: HARMONIOUS.” One ancient spiritual text teaches that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.” There is a wisdom to unity—acknowledging our differences yet always making a sincere effort to work together for the common good so that all may prosper together.

To this observer, it appears the United States of America exists in name only. The geo-political entity survives, but we as a people are no longer united. The closest we have come to being united in recent decades was in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Sadly, that unity was short-lived. Within a few years, the political parties were at each other’s throats again. 15 years after 9/11 we have reached a level of vitriol not seen since the Civil War. We had become so divided the current occupant of the Oval Office unapologetically leveraged that anger and divisiveness to get elected.

It is now four years after that election and the situation is decidedly worse. Today even medical advice during a global pandemic is politicized. A solution so simple as wearing a mask has become weaponized as an attack on liberty itself. Now states are joining the fray. Federal officers are cracking down on protests in major cities with no notice. States are filing suits against the federal government and beginning to ban those agents from their cities and states. Make no mistake, these emerging legal battles may well erupt into a Constitutional crisis of federal versus state rights.1

While this alone is alarming, what is worse is the likelihood that we will never be able to recover. Why? Because the average American has lost the ability to observe discerningly, think critically, question their own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and assumptions, and put in the hard work to pursue factual answers. Daniel Kahneman outlines two systems of thinking in his book, Thinking: Fast and Slow. System One operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System Two allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The former comes naturally while the latter requires deliberate hard work to establish thoughtful habits.

We now live in a System One world. People genuinely feel they are engaged without actually having to think about difficult economic, political, and social dynamics because their favorite news channel continuously tells them exactly what to think, reinforces what they already believe, and declares any dissenting opinion to be the enemy. Conservatives quote Fox News talking points; liberals quote MSNBC talking points. Try to go deeper than those overly simplistic frameworks and you will be met with anger alongside any number of logical fallacies to distract and dodge real conversation. Anything that might go against these brainwashed talking points is reflexively labeled and dismissed. The right might call it fake news, but the left mirrors the same behavior.

Benjamin Franklin once warned, “A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.” Most citizens of this nation have unknowingly chosen to inhabit this region of ignorance. They have surrendered their right to know the truth, to think critically, to challenge the status quo, and to pursue our nation’s ideals. Tragically, and because of that, it is almost impossible to see a way out. It is a path toward corrosion followed by imposition by first devolving into something worse before it comes to a breaking point. It begs the question, have we reached the end of the United States of American? Have we reached the point of no return?