Notes towards the Redefinition of a Nation

[Valin]

National Review:

Much of today’s political polarization can be reduced to a choice between competing narratives.

John O'Sullivan

February 9, 2017

 

Not for the first time, Ross Douthat has written a shrewd and sensitive op-ed on the struggle for dominance between the two American nations — not the rich and the poor, but the old and the new. But this is the first time, at least to my knowledge, that he has forecast that the new American nation will overcome the old and establish itself as the real America, though he is still agnostic on how this will happen and, one senses, whether the outcome can be achieved without serious violence.

 

One of the maddening things about criticizing a Douthat column is they are always so rich in argument that it’s hard to select a quotation that isn’t qualified by a thought elsewhere in the piece. That said, here are his descriptions, slightly rearranged from his column, of the two nations and their conflicting narratives.

 

The first nation is the uncontested America of the day before yesterday which, as he points out, is still the America of today for millions of Americans:

 

They still see themselves more as settlers than as immigrants, identifying with the Pilgrims and the Founders, with Lewis and Clark and Davy Crockett and Laura Ingalls Wilder. They still embrace the Iliadic mythos that grew up around the Civil War, prefer the melting pot to multiculturalism, assume a Judeo-Christian civil religion rather the “spiritual but not religious” version.

 

The other America is based on a rejection of important strands in this tradition:

 

In its place emerged a left-wing narrative that stands in judgment on the racist–misogynist–robber baron past, and a mainstream liberal narrative that has room for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton (as opposed to the slightly more Trumpish genuine article) and Emma Lazarus, but feels unsure about the rest.

 

 

As Douthat points out, it was a common and largely undiscussed assumption of both major parties and the elites that serve them that the old America would gradually give ground to the new until a fresh American synthesis was achieved, not without hurt feelings along the way but in the end broadly tolerable to all major social groups.

 

Within the limits of partisan advantage, therefore, both parties saw it as their responsibility to ensure that this gradual transformation of America’s national identity occurred without violence and undue conflict. Why not? It was inevitable, wasn’t it? But this required, and got, a degree of collusion between the parties that took the form of not strongly opposing policies such as affirmative action and not exploiting popular opposition to high levels of immigration and not following through on election promises to do something on such matters.

 

It seemed to work quite well until Donald Trump came along and raised these issues..................(Snip)