Reconciling No More

THROUGHOUT AMERICAN HISTORY a common, comforting theme has been that in the final analysis, despite our internal conflicts, we are all Americans, and must, at all costs, remain loyal to our beloved country. We are taught this in school, or were in my generation, and the partents of my generation, the World War Two generation which raised my generation, impressed this concept deeply into our awareness; patriotism at all costs. They had been young adults during the war, had fought bravely and sacrificed much to keep freedom's land free, and my baby booming generation inherited their values, for which I am extremely grateful. The truth, of course, is that the United States has rarely if ever been a "united" country. Two hundred and forty six years of slavery, and another hundred years of Jim Crow racism, followed by fifty years of our present racism the existence of which most of us now prefer to deny, have guaranteed against unification.There are many other factors contributing to our perpetual national disunity, of course, too many to enumerate here. Sectional rivalry and conflict was paramount from the beginning, the New England states and the southern states at odds with each other over matters such as slavery and represention in the national government, to the extent that before the Civil war all Americans were loyal to their home states forst, and to the fragile federal union second. A prominent historian riminds us that the Civil War changed "the United States are", into "the United Stats is", an important distinction, transitioning from plurality to singularity. During the Civil War we went from being many small countries, to being two larger ones, and, ultimately, to one nation, and, as of 1954, one nation "under God". Precisely which "god' has never been specified, although most Christians claim that it is theirs. In all that morass of interlocking conflicts national unity can be difficult to discern. and, of course, the current level of American polarization is alarming, more alarming than at any time since the Civil War. One stark fact we must accept, if we are to embrace relity: There is no hope of compromise, cooperation, and reconciliation in our current cultural socio-economic political civil war. The late Rush Limbaugh pointed this out, and he was quite correct. War ends nearly always with the utter destruction of one adversary, and the complete victory of the other. So it will be in our current civil war, which thus far is free of organized violence on a large scale, but which could easily descend into such violence, as the Civil War of 1861-1865 clearly demonstrated. The conservative Christian coalition will prevail or the secular progressive one will, and the other will vanish. I, a staunch member of the secular progressives, lost hope for and interest in cooperation and compromise with the Christian conservatives on election night, when Trump started claiming that the election had been stolen from him, and seventy percent of Republicans, and seventy percent of Christian conservatives believed him, and still do. When the same seventy percent approved of, and still approve of the insurrection at the Capitol on January sixth, the gloves came off, and, as we like to say, "its on". The millions of people who refused, and stil refuse to accept the results of a perfectly legitimate presidential electiion are my enemies, and I will work tirelessly to defeat them. To borrow a quote from the great British general Lord Cornwallis: "We'll see who takes the glory from this field of battle". And exactly how do I intend to bring about this great defeat of Trump conservatism? Why, at the ballot box, naturally.