A Fractured Country

Inspired by a Biblical text (Matthew 12:25), two years before becoming president, Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous foreboding speech, where he argues that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

He was referring, of course, to the division in the country between slave states and non-slave states that would soon lead to the Civil War. To many, it may seem an exaggeration to invoke this phrase and Lincoln’s speech to discuss the situation facing the U.S. today. However, the level of polarization and political tension that exists — just when the country is suffering its worst economic crisis since the ‘30s, two wars are being fought in Asia, and new powers in the world are emerging — are serious and undeniable issues.

The grotesque spectacle of a Protestant pastor from Florida, threatening to burn the Koran and creating a global incident, is yet another symptom of the existing deterioration. In Congress, the Republican Party decided to vote against all of the executive’s projects — whether they were in the nation’s best interest or not. From the new tea party — and from much of the Republican Party — and through various TV channels and radio stations, spouts a narrative that accuses President Obama of being a traitor, an Arab, a Muslim and a communist, and of trying to establish a dictatorship to nationalize the economy and of destroying the economy.

If the extreme right attacks and denigrates him, the convictions from the so-called liberalism do the same. Many Democrats, labor groups and leftist organizations write Obama off as nothing short of a traitor, as indecisive and as a sell-out to the great interests of Wall Street’s military-industrial complex. Only now, they see that if the ship sinks in the November election, they may all perish. Great intellectuals, including Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, have quieted their criticism of the president and his economic team after a year and a half of relentless attacks and bites.

Of course, these fractures weaken the United States in the world while also amusing and encouraging its enemies. Nevertheless, those who hate it should not rejoice too much because that country has been able to reinvent itself many times, even with all of the problems it faces, and continues to be the leading economic, political and military power in the world. Moreover, beyond the leadership that it maintains, its strength lies in its diversity and its ability to receive and include people from all over the world, including the best minds from all the continents. So I would highlight its large universities — as Edward Said stated, “the last remaining utopia[s]” on earth. These are also the great asset of this country — true centers of discussion, criticism and analysis. They are real factories of ideas and knowledge that, sooner or later, end up converted into technological innovations, new production processes in organizational transformations and adding value to old and new businesses.

Nothing, however, guarantees a secure and prosperous future. After all, the fate of the nation is in the hands of its leaders, with their advantages as well as their shortcomings. That is why they also have the obligation to remember history and understand that if they fail to come to a minimum of consensus and agreements — not putting their personal and their party’s interests before that which is in the best interests of the nation — the cause and the home of the American Union cannot be sustained.