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<\/a>I discussed selected aspects of America\u2019s divisive pathology in my book A Culture Divided: America\u2019s Struggle for Unity<\/em>, which was written in the closing years of the George W. Bush presidency. \u00a0Like many at the time, I had completely given up on the idea of \u201ccommon ground\u201d amid the residue of post-9\/11 reactionary fervor and emerging economic recession. Media commentators were buzzing constantly about red\/blue state polarization. \u00a0Opinions varied about the cause of the divide, attributing it to factors including regionalism, media sensationalism, partisan antipathy, or all of these combined. Also joining the fray were those asserting the divide was fabricated, with evenly divided elections showing most people in the middle of the curve on most issues.\u00a0 My somewhat contrarian view was that the \u201cproblem\u201d shouldn\u2019t be regarded problem at all. After all, America always<\/em> had been divided\u2013\u2013through war and peace, boom and bust. Division was the country\u2019s national brand.\u00a0 But as a book about politics, A Culture Divided<\/em> didn\u2019t get to the roots or the lived experience America\u2019s compulsive divisiveness.<\/p>\nSpeaking at the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, President Barack Obama described America as an incomplete project\u2013\u2013a nation caught between ideals of a perfect union and the lingering realities of their failure. While citing advances in civil liberties since the bloody apex of the Voting Rights Movement, Obama also spoke of a federal report issued just days earlier documenting structural racism and misbehavior toward African Americans by police in Ferguson, MO, where months before law enforcement officers had killed an unarmed black teenager. \u201cWe know the march is not yet over.\u00a0 We know the race is not yet won,\u201d the President stated, adding,\u00a0\u201cWe know that reaching that blessed destination requires admitting as much, facing up to the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s expansive rhetoric was hardly innocent in its appeal to \u201cAmerican\u201d values. Modern nations define themselves by mythic ideals as much as by land or populations. Philosophically speaking, the problem with ideals lies in the very abstraction that gives them broad appeal. In a heterogeneous society like the U.S., familiar terms like \u201cfreedom\u201d and \u201cequality\u201d are understood in radically different ways from region-to-region, and group-to-group. America always has struggled with such contests of meaning, as grand ideals of unity and inclusion nearly always forget someone. \u00a0Behind the country\u2019s mythic open door, newcomers often find that civic belonging comes with strings attached\u2013\u2013riddled with conditions, limitations, and in some instances, punitive rites of passage. And for those already here, new rationales emerge to challenge civic belonging on the basis of belief, behavior, or heritage\u2013\u2013as the idealized blessed destination is endlessly deferred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By David Trend: Throughout its existence the United States has shown a strange tendency to turn against itself, dividing citizens against each other with a vehemence rivaling the most brutal regimes on earth. Some have rationalized the resulting crisis of \u201cbelonging\u201d in America as an understandable consequence of cultural diversity, economic stress, and global threat. … <\/p>\n