Our Country: Always in Transition

In a moment of perilous division, it's easy to think we've always been stuck, but in truth, we remain a work in progress.

The Fourth of July always sets me thinking about the sacrifices our forebears made in the name of honor and country. I revel in our glorious, messy, obscene, and sacred past, thinking how hard it was to get here, to our inevitable present, and wonder what the future holds.

Our divisions have ultimately made us stronger. Each divisive conflict is regaled, Madison Avenue style, with the sunny belief that we’ve been made stronger and more united. Speeches are given, books are written, history is revised in a sort of, “See, it wasn’t that bad after all,” or, “It’s been worse,” kind of way.

Still, there’s a part of our collective consciousness that knows how wearing these conflicts are. Some are rooted in America’s original sin, slavery, and the fact that the race that we enslaved, while making truly remarkable progress in the last 60 years, is still the object of derision and prejudice.

It is said that while so much divides us, much more unites us, and I believe that. At the risk of sounding like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, I think compassion and love are the only ways forward. I’ve said for years that intermarriage between people of different religions and races may be the best long term solution for the sectarian, factional hate that divides us.

Commercial advertising affords us a look through that keyhole. Have you noticed the rapidly accelerating number of mixed race and gay couples in mainstream advertising? It’s prevalent on the internet, which is demographically and socio-economically targeted, but it is also everywhere on less targeted platforms like television and motion pictures.  

Backlash against social change has been at the root of our divisions. It finishes a close second behind race and religion, and is demonstrated daily in the so-called culture wars that pit conservatives who struggle with rapid cultural change, and progressives who think the culture changes too slowly. The conflict is right there in their names: those who wish to conserve the status quo, primarily because it benefits them, and those who want to see progress, because they find the status quo unfair and limiting.  

Throughout our past, just as today, the extremes capture the headlines, but the vast middle moves us inexorably to a more fair and equitable future. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

From the excellent news compendium, 1440 Daily Digest, we get this useful overview:

“Congratulations, America—Tuesday marks the 247th commemoration of the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress. The Congress actually voted to separate from Great Britain two days earlier, and most didn't sign the document until August ... and some argue the US didn't really become a country until we began operating under the Constitution in 1789.

Still, since then, the country has grown from 13 colonies with about 2.5 million people to 50 states and 14 territories with a population of more than 330 million. The economy has swelled to over $26T, with a median household income above $70K. 

Scientific and technological advances—public sanitation, the germ theory of disease, and more—have revolutionized public health, with our citizens living 35 years longer on average since the mid-20th century. Deaths during childbirth have dropped fiftyfold, while the child mortality rate—the percentage of children dying before age five—has plummeted from 45% to 1%. 

We've built almost 4 million miles of paved roads and more than 5,000 public airports. More than 2.7 million miles of power lines electrify the country, with about 85% of households having access to broadband internet and 92% having at least one computer. In 1800, 95% of the population lived in rural areas, and now about 83% live in urban areas.

Almost 90% of adults have a high school degree or equivalent, while just over one-third have a college degree. About 45 million immigrants call America home—the most of any country—while a roughly equal number of international tourists visit each year.”

We’ve always fought change while recognizing that it is the only constant. Nonetheless, and with as little hyperbole as possible, I regard this moment as the first time since the Civil War that democracy has truly been on the line. Forces in favor of an authoritarian, illiberal democracy, might be in the minority, but they are loud and being amplified by a potent media whose commercial life depends on sensationalizing our differences.

Benjamin Franklin, replying to an onlooker’s question about whether a republic or a monarchy had just been birthed in Philadelphia, replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it." So far, we’ve kept it for 247 years.

Here’s to the next 247! Long may we wave.

©2023 Jon Sinton