A NATION DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND

Unlike ancient Gaul, America is divided into more than three parts. There are many parts, all competing for special recognition. No need to name them for that would, under our present culture, lead to demands for apology, resignation, denunciation.

We are no longer a cohesive society. The inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty that asks that this nation be given the refuge longing to be free had it right. America – our portion of the hemisphere – was intended to be something different from its colonial days: a place to exercise individual beliefs without governmental interference. True, many missteps were taken from the time of the Pilgrims through slavery and Prohibition and just plain ornery politicians. But the ideal of people of all stripes being able to compromise and live in harmony was an ideal that was – at least – pursued.

But divisions go beyond civics.

Cultural divides may be deeper and longer lasting.

Divisions occur in literature, technological conveniences, societal intimacies, and most important, age and gender. Every segment and sub-segment is represented somewhere, somehow. Whether it be a neighborhood, a club, a national organization, a lobby, a Website, a post office box, an attitude, those segments are in some way recognizable.

Nonetheless, because of this segmentation, the gulf between portions of our divided society grows and grows. Adhesion, unity, togetherness, nationhood is becoming more and more difficult to reclaim, as it seemed once to exist.

Our oldest people can remember the ‘20s, although probably not that well. Someone born in 1920 is now in his or her 94^th year. Centenarians probably number more than at any time since Biblical, but still they are not that numerous. Real life experience is remembered for the most part only from the ‘30s. The boom years of the “Roaring Twenties” were about their Prohibition and booze-running excesses that divided people into wets and drys, the God-fearing and flappers, law-breakers and peace loving. The Depression brought widespread unemployment, with numerous hoboes roaming the country looking for work. It was a land of vast contrasts --- men with jobs and those on breadlines, baseball and sit-down strikes, movies and dance marathons, skating rinks and dust bowls.

Youngsters knew at least something about those things from morning and evening newspapers, radio, magazines, Movietone news. Those were the same sources for their elders. Not everyone had access to those sources, but enough did, even if not directly. Anyone that could not afford the ten cents a week needed for home delivery of a paper, could stand outside the local newspaper building and read chalked boards with the latest headlines. Word got around, even to the underemployed and unemployed.

Regardless of age or financial status, everyone read, listened to or saw the same media (a word not used in this sense then) outlets. Cities of several hundred thousand usually had at least two or three AM and PM papers and sometimes shoppers, distributed free. Weekly magazines like the Saturday Evening Post were eagerly awaited for their variety of articles, commentary, news photos and fiction. Movies were seen either in the big and fancy downtown theaters with uniformed ushers or in the neighborhood movie house with free china one night a week to draw in customers. AM radio stations – three in most big towns, one each for CBS, NBC and the Red or Blue Network – programmed similarly: music from “hillbilly” to popular band and orchestra to classical to opera, drama from serious stories to comedy to “soap operas,” sports coverage from the ball park or college stadium to re-created reports based on Western Union blurbs for each inning or quarter, plus disc jockey shows. And, of course, there were libraries. Network programs were mostly produced live, including music, and unseen announcers wore tuxedos at night so as to be properly dressed.

Father, mother, children gathered around the radio and listened carefully through static to Sunday night comedy, drama, or to championship boxing matches, Fireside Chats. Radio and movies were big. [People went to movies when they wished, not timing their arrival to starting times. A common phrase, when getting up to leave, was, “This is where I came in.”]

So was all of this good? Not necessarily. These news and entertainment providers, however artful, did tend to unify their audiences. Readers and listeners enjoyed the same things, yet were discriminating enough to disagree on the content. The adhesion these various forms of news and entertainment brought was valuable to society. Some families might be broken, sure that happened, but the idea of families was not disparaged. Home brew might be passed around in a growler at family gatherings, but drunks were not created that way. Bootlegging might bring some hooch into a neighborhood celebration; crime was not glorified. People dressed in their good clothes, not only to go to church but to downtown shopping and to movies. Dating was the norm among young people, usually arranged ahead of time with boys calling on girls and waiting with her parents before she arrived in the living room. Of course there were some cases of pre-marital births, but such occurrences were considered shameful, not broadcast as acceptable behavior.

Class distinctions existed but without the overtness of English life. Formal clothing, such as striped trousers and morning coats and Ascots with top hats were seen on occasion; ladies wore gloves. Working men who did not do hard labor wore suits and ties to the job; leisure clothes were merely old clothing. Children did not wear scaled down adult clothing. For boys, moving up to long pants from knickers was cause for celebration. Higher education tended to stratify society, but not entirely. Recognition of generations was practiced, with young people being taught and expected to be respectful “to their elders.” Polite behavior was encouraged and practiced fairly uniformly. Bad language was pretty much confined to men and boys in their own gatherings and avoided in mixed company, and at home.

Were things better then and to be copied now? An obvious question; still no real direct answer possible.

Real social evils existed then, especially in race relations. There were unspeakable injustices such as lynching. Segregation went beyond mere choice (as sometimes happens now, unfortunately). It was lawful.

World War II and post-war conditions and the GI Bill probably lumped together probably hastened change in societal behavior. Those young people who grew up before and during the war were the actors in the change.

Society is courser now than then. No doubt about that. But it cannot all be blamed on the younger, post-wars generations. Not all can be blamed on technology and its adoption and adaption by entrepreneurs selling it to younger people eager to try it and be creative with it.

No, the norms of behavior and societal restraints have evolved into something much different than those in the ‘20s and ‘30s and ‘40s, and even early ‘50s. A turn occurred slowly from principles and mores that had existed for a great number of generations. Those guiding norms originated in Europe and found their way here, being adapted to a more democratic society, but nevertheless persisting, even through the rough and tumble of movement from the east to the wildness of the west.

In recent decades, American society’s segmentation has worked to the detriment of those unifying norms of behavior. Could it be that entrepreneurs, acting in a perfectly acceptable manner, trying to maximize profits have Balkanized the populace by taking advantage of differing tastes of its age levels? This concentration on demographics has divided Americans into targeted markets for goods and services that deepen separation. Look at kids sitting next to each other, texting and not conversing but communicating with thumbs tapping out speed-spell words, acronyms, and misspelled words. Social and communication skills are waning¸ bringing more individualism, endangering true friendships and dulling job qualifications.

Only persuasion can change our situation. But who is to persuade whom about what?

Politicians in Washington can’t even agree to disagree. Complete demonization becomes both tactic and goal in partisan encounters for victories. Political scientists collect data but define few principles. Philosophers (modern ones, anyway) wring hands but few bells. Theologians hail but fail to sell brotherly love based on divine worship.

Too many people overemphasize their individual rights, denying or ignoring those of a cohesive society. Selfish acts too often trump co-operative acts. How then to persuade the selfish to share and consider helpful ideas. It is something like the story portraying hell as full of food and starving inmates; they sit at tables laden with tasty viands, but each has a spoon with a broom-length handle. Selfishness prevents cooperation that could bring full bellies for all.

Some commentators see a profound difference between individualism and individuality. The former is freedom without responsibility; the latter freedom while seeking social good. Libertine versus liberty-loving.

Some leader – better leaders – needs to emerge who can show that common principles exist that unite Americans while still permitting division on the best ways to retrieve then maintain those sound convictions. Those principles, some at least, are questioned. Politically correct speech is infiltrating our society, especially in universities. By its very nature, PC attacks freedom of speech, one of the tenets labeled a right in the First Amendment. The attack goes beyond individual speech and hits political discourse – exactly why that right was recognized by the amendment’s authors -- when tax bureaucrats can discriminate handing out exemptions to groups organized around ideas. The right to practice religion is endangered when other bureaucrats can require action contrary to conscience. The right to criticize government is narrowed when some news organizations are intimidated by government’s lawyers. When those fundamental rights are threatened and other news organizations ignore their duty to ferret out the offenders.

Leaders must be among us who can point the country toward common beliefs and doctrines that could foster unity of purpose, recognition that the Constitution is a plan and not a roadblock.

Or, maybe our American society is now so fragmented that any semblance of cohesion is improbable. Seers of the past warned that democracy contained seeds of its own destruction. Can that be proved wrong? Our grandchildren may the generation to find out.

A house divided cannot stand.

Lincoln made that point famous in his 1858 speech accepting his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate. He was speaking about a country “half slave and half free.”

Jesus said it first when he was accused of driving out demons by the power of Beelzebul. “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and no town or house divided against itself will stand.”