Many years ago I was driving cross county and had a breakdown near Council Bluffs, Iowa. I went ahead to get help and my companion stayed with the vehicle. When I and a tow truck returned, she spoke astoundingly about all the people that stopped and asked if she needed help. She vowed to remember that place because she found this unusual having lived only in San Francisco and Long Island, New York. But it wasn’t unusual; that place was the United States of America.
Years later at a dinner party in Hollywood, a very successful screenwriter told me of his involvement with the CIA. Following 9/11 they wanted help in understanding the minds of Islamic and other terrorists and convened a secret group of fiction writers to assist. (I can tell this story just as he was able to tell me because it was leaked to and disclosed by the “patriotic” New York Times) This writer was honored to be selected and even more honored to serve. But as the conversation proceeded, I learned that he had only lived in Philadelphia and Los Angeles and was too afraid to travel through Middle America. He saw those inhabitants as all possible Klan-types complicated by and projected from his fear of anti-Semitism.
These personal experiences reflect the ongoing American cultural divide. But how deep and persuasive is this? About 25 years ago I heard a Bay Area clairvoyant speak. She hated George W. Bush and looked into the future to see the outcome of his policies. But what she saw was the breakup of America into a series of regional republics. We all were dumb struck. Later I realized that the question was not a future breakup of the USA, but rather are the preconditions here? Bill Bishop’s book, The Great Sort, lays out the intensified political polarization and increased sorting of the population. Locally, two former Mother Lode Tea Party leaders have vamoosed to other states.
I don’t know the outcome, but I suspect that it will get worse before it can get better. Certainly the #Walk Away Movement of Democrats saying bye-bye is hopeful given their attitude of down home American common sense. Perhaps our new media is replicating Sam Adam’s Committees of Correspondence. I pray that we can heal. But I’m also always aware of the years of miseducation that negates rather than loves America and that still lives within many younger people. We have too many Americans who live here, but don’t know where they live.
On personal note, when I left home, I was full not only of the history of America, but the romance as well. I walked and hitchhiked the Oregon Trail, I sunbathed on the levees along the Mississippi, and I got drunk on the corner of 12th and Vine in Kansas City.
Copyright 2018, Mark L. Bennett
