There’s No Cultural War Being Fought in America

Just before the election, the United States is divided into two equally strong camps. Nonetheless, the intersection of values and beliefs that these camps both share is far larger than the stalemate would suggest.

It’s no secret that newspaper editors write obituaries of prominent people in advance just to be on the safe side should something happen to them. The obits sometimes languish for years in a folder marked “dead”; and it has happened that the author of the obit predeceases the person he has written about. In that case, a new obituary has to be written.

The results of elections are also sometimes written in advance. Newspapers are under pressure to get their early editions out as soon after the first election returns are in as possible. There’s hardly time for analysis and the age of online news has only reinforced this trend. Whoever gets the analysis out five minutes after the early vote tallies are in gets the first mouse clicks and thus establishes the direction of the spin.

So let’s get to work. How will the headlines read on the day after the election? Maybe like this: Election eve revealed a deeply divided population that split its decision between two equally powerful camps. It was almost as if two different countries had voted — men vs. women, whites vs. blacks, Protestants vs. Catholics and Jews, rural vs. urban, small communities vs. big cities. One camp voted for Mitt Romney and the other for Barack Obama.

Oops! That headline was written long ago. 12 years ago, the news magazine “der Spiegel” used it over an article they called “A Divided Nation.” That was about the stalemated Florida election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Just change the names and it reads like today’s news.

Try again: It wasn’t just two candidates running for election, it was two world views. A clash of cultures. The “red American,” according to demographers, is a bit older than average and married. He usually doesn’t belong to a labor union, loves macho sports and owns a firearm. He lives outside the city or in a small town. The “blue American” is a woman living in an urban area or a suburb, younger than the average, well-educated and thinks ethnic diversity is a desirable thing (or belongs to a minority herself). It’s a schism, an apartheid of living conditions.

You might know. That’s also old hat, having appeared in 2004 in “die Zeit” newspaper when George W. Bush eked out a victory against John Kerry. The headline on that article was “The Semi-United States.” Shortly before that election, the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper published an article titled “The Big Stalemate” in which they noted, “Meanwhile, opinion surveys are released almost hourly and first see the incumbent ahead, then trailing. Nobody wants to make predictions these days. They only go so far as to say it will be close. Very close.”

It’s All About a Better Way of Muddling Through

And this year? Let’s take a look at a campaign report printed in the Austrian magazine “Profil” that says, “Each opinion survey, every bar discussion, every coffee house argument (and certainly every minute on television news) reinforces the impression that America is a divided nation. Two opposing philosophies face one another, unyielding and incapable of change. Whoever wakes up winner of the presidency on November 7 will have half the nation supporting him. But that’s it.”

All that is right — and wrong as well. Whoever votes makes a choice. That is to say, he also abandons something. Spinoza already espoused “Omnis determinatio est negatio”: “Every individual determination is merely a negation.”

Both Obama and Romney may have their dedicated fans, but many Americans will struggle with themselves on November 6 to reach a decision. With heavy hearts, as they say. No culture war will be waged, just differences of opinion, despite the Obama administration’s high debt and despite Romney’s dislike of big government.

There were no exciting topics to arouse public passions this year. Neither abortion nor same sex marriage, neither immoral wars nor capital punishment, neither gun ownership nor climate change. This one’s all about crisis management; the best way to muddle through.

The hype surrounding Obama has evaporated and Romney warms nobody’s heart. Radical liberals vote for Obama out of a sense of duty and their dislike of Romney. Conservative Christians just as mechanically vote for Romney because they dislike Obama. There’s neither hope nor vision behind their decisions, just political habit and the lesser of two evils.

Yes, America is a country divided into two equally strong camps, but the intersection of values and beliefs that these camps both share is far larger than the stalemate would suggest. It’s more as if America in 2012 is divided like two halves of a pizza. One side has salami, the other pepperoni. But together they still make a pizza.