I am not quite sure what is happening with the returns or when we will know who our President will be come January. I do know that it may take time to count legitimate ballots. I know that our system provides for challenges and recounts (which are not voter suppression!). I know that it seems strange that suddenly late election night all counting stopped as certain states looking as if they would go to Trump suddenly decided to await additional ballots (many of which, legitimate or not?, they seem to have found supportive of Biden).
If Biden is elected, I will accept that. I will not like it and I will mourn for the America that I believe in. If Trump is elected, I hope that Democrats will accept that, unlike their hate-based refusal to do so from the date of his 2016 election until today. But I do not hold out much hope for any tolerance towards Trump or his supporters from the Democrats. I wish there was something more positive to say. There is not.
One thing that this election (as well as the last 4 years) has made perfectly clear: We have two Americas. And they cannot be reconciled.
Look at the election maps. In nearly every state you will see vast expanses of red in rural areas with large blue spots atop the big cities. This red-blue political divide reflects the larger divide between the values and lifestyles of the two groups. These values, these hopes and dreams for themselves, their neighbors, and for America are often in direct opposition to one another. The divide is really a divide of two cultures not unlike the divide between two countries.
It has been suggested that we should have a Fulbright type program between metropolitan and rural areas within the U.S. This would be a way to foster a better understanding of different ways of life, different cultural values in the same way that the Fulbright program fosters such understanding between different nations.
While I like the sound of this idea, I wonder if it would really help to bring this nation together. Yes, it would probably promote understanding just as the current Fulbright program promotes understanding of other countries and cultures. But that understanding does not actually unite two countries into one and currently we essentially have two countries within our borders.
In 2018 the Pew Research Center published a study of the differences between urban, suburban, and rural cultures. The study found significant differences between urban/suburban and rural not only in politics, but also in such things as measures of economic well-being, education, optimism about the future, basic values, views on social issues, importance of diversity, drugs and drug addiction, importance of family ties and attachment to community, interaction with neighbors, immigration, age and economic status of population, type of jobs available, etc. These are discussed in great detail with statistics and charts showing nuances of similarities and differences; the entire report can be found here: LINK
While there are small areas of similarity between urban and rural (with suburban a sort of neutral zone between the two that leans toward each in some ways), there is really very little upon which they agree. Their differences can all be traced to differences in core values. While it is possible to tolerate a different value system in another, it is not possible to change it to your own.
Yet that is exactly what many Democrats and their policies would do. They would force us to conform to a given set of values legislated or mandated by the government. There would be no room for tolerance of others. And the core values of rural and urban are distinctly different and irreconcilable.
Our country was mostly rural for much of its existence. Cities have grown larger and larger with former rural dwellers as well as many immigrants who are newer to America and its culture. The two cultures have different needs and different desires; their cultures are different.
World views, values, beliefs are formed in childhood. While their superficial expressions may change, their core rarely does. So if we have entirely different core values being instilled then the populations and the culture that result from those values will be very different and perhaps unable to live together as one.
While Pew did not discuss religion, I think that one’s faith leads to and supports many of one’s values. Faith and religion play different roles in the lives of rural and urban dwellers. In many instances the faith of a rural area is a central part of the community; it is something that helps to hold the community together. In urban areas there may be pockets of sub-communities held together by a particular faith, but faith/religion is not the driving force within most urban areas.
Additionally, the values necessary to a rural culture include self-reliance and independence. In an urban setting where large numbers of people are grouped together in small spaces, there is more need to become a part of the group and a greater dependence on the group than on ones’s self, for both daily needs as well as one’s own identity. A belief that one has the right to control one’s own destiny does not merge well with the belief that government can and should control much of a citizenries’ behavior.
Rural and urban America have different mind-sets that have resulted in different cultures. At one time the total populations between rural and urban were not that different allowing both cultures to have some say in the overall running of our country.
Today, the urban cities, because of their large populations are more and more able to control the outcome of both statewide and federal elections. This is dangerous. When two cultures must reside together and only one is heard, the outcome is never good.
I honestly do not think that the huge rural-urban gap can be bridged. We have two countries and two cultures. We used to be able to tolerate different views, but this goes well beyond different views. Because the underlying values are so different the two groups seek entirely different Americas. While they might want to visit, neither wants to live in the America of the other.
In this election, once the counts and recounts are concluded and court battles decided, we will have a winner. The people will have spoken. But I wonder how long we are able to have one half of the country whose views are polar opposite of the other decide how the entire country will live. We will permanently be at war with one another.
We cannot solve this problem with politics or legislation. We cannot require someone to change their values or beliefs to suit whomever is in power. We cannot have both big and small government. We cannot have both capitalism and socialism. We cannot hold traditional values and deny those traditions for a new world order.
Once this election is resolved, we will have people calling for us to understand one another and get along, to have “conversations” about our differences. These things never work. We are different people and we simply have to accept that fact. The question is, being so different that we are essentially entirely at odds in all that we believe, how do we live together?
Our Constitution and our government used to help us to do that with its protections of each individual’s beliefs and speech and its demands for tolerance of others with differing views. But one of the great divides is that half of us no longer respect that Constitution or our form of government.
I wish I had a solution.
I do not.
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