The Great American Identity Crisis

America. The land of opportunity. The land of bleeding edge science, technology, and medicine. A melting pot of the "world's leading minds" creating humanity's future. The world's sole superpower that won the Cold War. The brightest beacon of liberty, prosperity, and innovation the world has ever seen. And yet, also the land that now teeters dangerously on the verge of a societal implosion, wrecked by political polarization, rising extremism, and insularity. A nation where a radical Christian cishet patriarchy seeks to void many human rights of women and LGBTQ+ people. A nation whose elected President incited an unprecedented violent mob attack on the elected Congress. How did America get here? Where does it go from here?

In this article, I analyze the very identity of the USA and its deepest fault lines today. I do so from my objective vantage point of an external observer: an Indian who came here for higher education 13 years ago and who stayed here to start my academic career 6 years ago. I did not even bother applying to other nations. It is in the USA that I came out of the closet, fell in love, got my PhD, got married, and got tenured. My husband is an American who once told me of his long-term desire of leaving the USA for safer shores, worried about its seemingly downward spiral. I said no. Why? To quote one of my favorite characters, Professor X: "Just because someone stumbles and loses their way, it does not mean they are lost forever." My confidence is not blind, however, and it was tested once, on January 6, 2021. As if by cosmic irony, I received my permanent resident card just hours later that same day.

I do not identify as a liberal, nor a conservative, libertarian, capitalist, socialist, fascist, Nazi, Commie, or whatever other socio-politico-economic labels people use. I prefer the label freethinker. To me nothing is beyond the reach of critical inquiry. Based on such inquiry, I am a huge supporter of the doctrine of universal human rights (e.g., see this ode I wrote) and of democratic constitutional rule of law rooted in logic, reason, civility, and kindness. I also reject kraterocracy and Social Darwinism as ultimately inimical to humanity.

This is my fourth article on America's sociopolitical life. The first (2019) is a critique of misguided liberal policies on identity that I saw as fanning White nationalism in the USA. The second (2021) is a personal memoir on salient similarities and differences between India and America, my two homes. The third (2021) is another critique of hypocrisies in liberal (and conservative) policies that I see as exacerbating America's downward spiral. I recommend reading all three of those articles if you are interested. I also recommend this incisive critique of the four dominant "political tribes" of America today: the "free," the "smart," the "real," and the "just."

The Roots of American Identity

Let me start with a brief history lesson, facts about the roots of the identity of the USA. I will then weave a thread through this past, the present, and possible futures.

Fact 1:
The USA has the world's oldest active Constitution, which offers its people a list of "rights" that its government cannot (easily) trample upon. It is fair to say the USA has set the benchmark for constitutional rule of law for self-governing peoples. Indeed, many other nations, including India, learned a lot from America's Constitution and its experiences--not just adopting its positives but also avoiding its negatives.

Fact 2:
The USA was not a democracy at inception (nor for decades after) but what is more accurately labeled an oligarchy. The war that overthrew British rule bequeathed de jure political power to primarily rich land-owning cishet White men. But the USA was born out of not just a war won by White men but also the toil of enslaved Black Africans, ethnic cleansing/genocides of indigenous peoples (and mass deaths due to foreign diseases), and denial of de jure equality to women.

All that set tone for the long history of systemic racism and systemic misogyny in the USA, whose dismantling started in earnest only in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act. Contrast this with, say, India's Constitution that at inception (in 1950) outlawed millennia-old systemic casteism and anti-Dalit untouchability, instituted strong affirmative action for Dalits, other so-called lower castes, and tribes, and offered de jure equality to women. Of course, de facto equality is still an uphill struggle in both nations.

Fact 3:
The USA is not a top-down republic. A cluster of British colonies came together to voluntarily give up some sovereignty and invest in a made-up umbrella identity named "The United *States* of America." So, it is a bottom-up republic forged by "state-ocracy." Federalism pervades its Constitution. Contrast this with, say, the French Republic, the archetypal unitary state. Or the Republic of India, a top-down republic that adopted a more prudent "federalism with a unitary bias."

Fact 4:
The American Civil War, which almost bifurcated the young nation, was caused mainly by the pushback of so-called "slave states" of the South to the abolition of slavery by the federal government. They banded together to form a separatist nation--The Confederate States of America--that was defeated and re-assimilated by the Union. This set the tone for the so-called "states' rights" movement that still wields enormous influence in the USA. But that term is also seen as loaded in the sense that it is sometimes used as a cover for systemic racism in some states with plausible deniability.

Fact 5:
America's national identity is not (yet) a sociocultural "nation state" but one of "civic nationalism" rooted in its written Constitution. The land and the peoples now called the USA never had a unified government until the current Constitution. So, America's identity is more like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and (to a lower extent) South Africa, rather than, say, Greece, Egypt, India, or China, whose national identities were shaped by long unifying civilizational arcs.

America's founding ethnoracial groups--Britons, enslaved Black Africans, and indigenous tribes--are from different continents with disjoint heritages. Due to territorial expansion via wars and purchases, as well as its status as a magnet for both immigrants and refugees seeking liberty and/or prosperity, the USA started to become a "melting pot." Some of the largest waves included Britons, Germans, Irish, Italians, Ashkenazi Jews, Poles, Russians, Canadians, Mexicans, Cubans, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, Indians, and Iranians.

Although the term "hyphenated American" is often used to shame people into conforming to an imagined unified identity, many groups proudly maintain their ancestral cultural heritage. Many indigenous tribes still track ancestry by "blood quantum" as part of their ethos of tribal "sovereignty" and resistance to colonization. While many European Americans blended themselves into a made-up all-purpose "White" identity, many Germans, Irish, Italians, and Ashkenazi Jews still maintain a distinct sub-White cultural identity. Most Black Africans, however, were sadly stripped of their ancestral cultural heritage by the dehumanizing genericization of enslavement.

Fact 6:
The USA is constitutionally secular. The government cannot (easily) espouse an official religion nor can it (easily) discriminate on the basis of religion, or lack thereof. Its interpretation as "freedom of religion" is a key part of America's promise of liberty to groups who fled religious persecution elsewhere, especially some Protestant groups, some Catholic groups, and many Jewish groups from Europe.

Fact 7:
The USA was heavily shaped by Capitalism, economic globalization, and prudent use of some Socialist ideas. The free market, reined in with careful regulations on competition, labor, and environment, as well as strategic government investment in research (e.g., NSF, NIH, and DARPA) and key sectors (e.g., defense and ICT) helped make the USA the world's richest nation, its top innovation hub, a military superpower, and the home of many of the world's largest and most successful corporations.

With the above historical background in mind, let us now dive deeper into what I see as the "Great American Identity Crisis." Others have analyzed this situation too, e.g., this article calls it a "Great Divergence." I think "divergence" is misleading because it implies there was one unified identity to diverge from (there never was). Some also worry about a new civil war--I think that is mostly hyperbole. In my assessment, the USA is undergoing tectonic realignments in its identity. Let us now dive into the most prominent fault lines driving this national identity crisis. (Interestingly, India too is undergoing a similar national identity crisis; perhaps I will write about it another day.)

I see 7 major fault lines: demographics, equality and secularism, separation of powers, democratic structure, economics, guns, and freedom of speech.

Fault Line 1: Demographics (Immigration, Ethnoracial Diversity, Racism)

This is perhaps the biggest and fastest growing fault line (re-read fact 5 above). Most liberals love to label the USA a "nation of immigrants" given its history. Most conservatives, however, consider that label a relic of the past and want to put "America First" now. Libertarians seem split on immigration, with some emphasizing high-skilled immigration to benefit the US economy and others favoring low-skilled immigration too. A term from White nationalist discourse that is now mainstream is the "Great Replacement Theory." Its claim is that non-White immigrants, especially illegal migrants, are being used to diminish the political power of Whites. It was most memorably articulated by White nationalists and neo-Nazis at their Charlottesville rally: "You will not replace us. Jews will not replace us." What exactly is going on?

The crux of this fault line is the reality of changing demographics in the USA. Hispanics/Latinos and Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnoracial groups, the former by absolute numbers, the latter by percentages. Non-Hispanic Whites are reducing in percentage due to multiple causes, including lower fertility rates, migration from Europe drying up, and migration from Latin America staying high. But many White nationalists believe it is due to a sinister conspiracy by the "globalist" Jewry and liberal politicians to aggrandize perpetual political power. In my assessment, the accusation against Jews is plain old European-style Antisemitism but that against liberal politicians is not entirely unfounded. As I have said before here and here, most American liberals seem bizarrely blind to how their imprudent votebank politics on illegal migration from Latin America is fanning White nationalism. Instead of the extremes of full citizenship or full deportation, perhaps a middle way with a new class of taxable permanent residency can resolve this impasse, akin to how Persian Gulf nations handle expatriate workers from South/Southeast Asia.

A related issue is America's continuing struggle with racism. The brazen murder of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by a White cop on camera shook the nation at a level comparable only to 9/11 perhaps in recent memory. It reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement, helping raise awareness of anti-Black racism present not just in the USA, Canada, or Europe but also in Latin America, North Africa, Middle East, and Asia. Naturally, pushback from the American rightwing is also growing, e.g., see the recent bans on Critical Race Theory and some far left agendas to brand "Whiteness" and American institutions as "inherently" racist instead of evolving.

Another major demographic fault line is how Asian Americans and Whites (including Ashkenazi Jews) are "disadvantaged" by affirmative action in parts of US academia to rectify historical exclusion/marginalization of Blacks, indigenous peoples, and Hispanics/Latinos, e.g., see the Harvard case. Asian Americans are increasingly divided on this issue, e.g., support for affirmative action among Chinese Americans dropped to just over half, while Indian Americans, the richest ethnic group in the USA by median household income, remain curiously highly supportive. Hispanics/Latinos are also divided, e.g., see the embarrassing failure of Proposition 16 in Hispanic/Latino-dominated counties of California despite the behemoth University of California System and many civil rights groups (ACLU, ADL, NAACP, etc.) endorsing it. Anyway, all these tussles may become moot soon because I suspect this Supreme Court will hold all non-economic affirmative action unconstitutional using the Fourteenth Amendment.

It remains to be seen how all this will pan out. But I suspect White nationalism and neo-Nazi hate crimes will keep growing. A bigger picture I see is that a pernicious disease of democracies that wreaked havoc in India, votebank politics, has now sadly taken root in the USA too, among both liberals and conservatives. Both the big parties now seem to prefer appeasing their own votebanks to just win the next election rather than a more prudent rule of law in the nation's long-term interest.

Fault Line 2: Equality and Secularism (Freedom of/from Religion, Women and LGBTQ+ People)

This is tied for the biggest fault line. The Supreme Court recently threw out half a century of precedent of Roe v. Wade and pushed the legality of abortion down to the states (also see fault line 3 below). Many believe this is part of a creeping Christianization that violates the founding constitutional principle of secularism. It spurred worldwide condemnation of the USA, including by the UN and many American allies. Again, what exactly is going on?

There is no consensus in jurisprudence on what "secularism" means. France and India exemplify two alternatives; the former views it as rigid separation of religions from government affairs, while the latter views it as equal respect for all religions. American secularism swings between the two, often causing confusion. The USA prides itself as a refuge for groups who fled religious persecution (see fact 6 above). This narrative was reinforced by Cold War-era rivalry with the USSR, where Commies suppressed religions. So, conservatives love to emphasize freedom "of" religion to allow religious groups to practice their religious edicts without being trampled by government. But the USA was also a key architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So, liberals love to emphasize freedom "from" religion and want government to ensure human rights for all Americans even if it means trampling on some religious edicts. This dichotomy has led to bizarre flip-flops and some ongoing tussles.

The Christian Bible was the theological basis to rationalize enslavement of Black Africans (Capitalism was the economic basis), continuing what Arabs/Muslims, Romans, and others did for centuries before. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment accorded "equal" rights to Blacks (see fact 4 above). Alas, the doctrine of "separate but equal" upheld by the Supreme Court meant state-imposed racist segregation and terrorism by KKK and other White Christian supremacist groups kept Blacks oppressed for another century. Yet, Blacks are ironically the most devoutly Christian ethnoracial group in the USA. MLK Jr. himself was a Christian reverend and many Christian priests, including Whites, were a part of the Black civil rights movement. Overall, Christianity clevely pivoted itself from supporting racism to opposing it.

A similar situation is unfolding for women and LGBTQ+ people. Many Christian groups peddle cishet patriarchy: a (cishet) woman must "submit" as a wife to her (cishet) husband, while LGBTQ+ people are branded as deviant sinners. Many conservatives agree with such views, while most liberals and libertarians oppose them as unconstitutional discrimination. Nevertheless, the right to equality of both women and LGBTQ+ people has been gaining recognition. The Supreme Court narrowly held same-sex marriage constitutional in 2015. Then in 2020 it interpreted federal non-discrimination protection in employment to apply to LGBTQ+ people too, even with a conservative majority. But of course, there are no guarantees such verdicts cannot be reversed, as I noted in this interview a couple of years ago.

Conservatives did succeed in blocking the ERA and rolling back abortion access. But surprisingly, as per this credible poll, a third of American women themselves support strong abortion bans; and Hispanics, one of the ethnoracial groups most likely to seek abortion care, are also the most likely to support such bans. Many also oppose abortion not due to Christian dogma but due to a supposed human right to life of the fetus, thus seeing abortion as a form of murder. All this has made this issue more vexed than a cut-and-dried question of women's human rights even though such bans will lead to more women dying trying to get abortions anyway. Contrast all this with Ireland, which legalized reasonable abortion in a landslide referendum after the tragic case of Savita Halappanavar jolted the nation into rejecting the dogma of the powerful Roman Catholic Church. All that said, perhaps more investment in assistive reproductive technologies such as artificial wombs and fetal offloading can help resolve this impasse on abortion.

Finally, right to equality for trans people is another growing fault line. While transphobia is pervasive among conservatives, liberals themselves are still divided on how to balance the rights of cis-women with those of trans-women, intersex people, nonbinary people, etc. For instance, see this recent thoughtful decision on trans people in sports. This issue divides not only allies in the shared struggle against the stranglehold of the cishet patriarchy, viz., cishet women and LGBTQ+ people, but also lesbians and/or cisgender folks within the LGBTQ+ community itself. Alas, quarrels between trans-exclusionary radical feminists and cis-misogynistic trans radicals continue to distract from nuanced discussions on equality and fairness.

Fault Line 3: Separation of Powers (Federalism, Judiciary)

One of the most under-appreciated but extremely influential organizations that has, and continues to, reshape America is The Federalist Society. Working patiently over four decades, they have succeeded in placing a super majority of justices (6 of 9) on the Supreme Court to advance their "textualist" and "originalist" interpretations of the Constitution. The ongoing conservative + libertarian "constitutional revolution" mirrors the liberal revolution of the Warren Court many decades ago. This new revolution re-emphasizes two principles: (1) Federalism (duh), rebalancing states' power vs. federal power; and (2) Non-activist Judiciary, deferring contentious ambiguities in laws to elected legislators instead of unelected judges. Both principles are deep-rooted in the US Constitution (see facts 3 and 4 above). This is how the Supreme Court majority is able to void federal guarantees on some rights and push them down to the states.

However, claims of "originalism" are often specious because going by a strict originalist interpretation of the US Constitution, women can be disenfranchised and Blacks can be re-segregated. But I doubt most conservatives want that. Runaway federalism will also exacerbate inter-state tussles because its logical conclusion is a "Disunited" States of America, a patchwork of contradictory state-level rights that, if left unchecked, can become grounds for a new civil war. Suppose an abortion-illegal state decides to charge with "murder" a woman who gets an abortion. If such a woman flees to an abortion-legal state to get an abortion, should she be extradited for "murder" or is she an internally displaced "refugee" fleeing political persecution?

All that said, I am bemused by how many Americans have a delusion that the Supreme Court is "apolitical" despite the justices being handpicked by politicians with vested agendas and vetted by more politicians! Contrast this with, say, India's Supreme Court, where judges are not picked by politicians but by a more technocratic process within the judge profession (although it has issues too). The American rightwing understands this well and used it to grow their political power on the Supreme Court. Their constitutional acumen, longterm thinking, and patience is praiseworthy. In contrast, liberals still flounder without a focused analogue of the Federalist Society. Throwing tantrums over losing when the rules of the game were clear is not a strategy. Perhaps liberals will learn valuable lessons from these recent failures and redouble their efforts in every state, not just at the federal level. Of course, that is easier said than done due to the next fault line.

Fault Line 4: Democratic Structure (Non-Linear System, Voting)

The USA evolved into a quasi-democracy over two centuries. It has a highly non-linear collection of step functions that often fails the most basic definition of democracy, viz., rule by majority will. Two key forms of non-linearity are: (1) Electoral College for presidential elections; and (2) First-past-the-post at the district level. The first one is an oddity that has led to consequential anti-democratic outcomes, viz., Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Trump v. Clinton in 2016. But it is deep-rooted in America's Constitution (see facts 3 and 4 above again). The second one is actually common in many democracies. But as with the Supreme Court, districting in the USA is also a political game controlled by state politicians, again due to federalism in its constitutional history. This has led to obscene gerrymandering directly undermining democracy, mainly by conservatives but also by liberals. Contrast this with, say, districting in India being handled by more technocratic federal constitutional bodies, the Election Commission and the Delimitation Commission.

Voting is also a huge pain in parts of the USA. I have seen news reports of voters being forced to wait in line for hours! I have voted only once in my life--in the Indian General Election, the largest election run by humanity, back in 2009. My polling booth was 15min from home and it took me 5min to stand in line, show my voter ID card, and cast my vote. No fuss, no muss. So, I am flabbergasted that a much richer nation with 4x smaller population is still yet to get even basic operations of a democracy right. For instance, assigning polling booths, uniform voter ID, and updating voter lists--mundane matters in most democracies--are juicy fodder for political blame games by both Republicans and Democrats. The former imagine widespread voter "fraud" instead of mitigating unfair obstacles to voting. The latter imagine widespread "racist" voter suppression when most obstacles are causally economic, not racial (although some are highly correlated with race, lending plausible deniability). Alas, common sense to simultaneously ensure fair technocratic districting, election integrity, and ease of voting for all does not seem to fly.

Fault Line 5: Economics (Capitalism, Welfare State, Taxation)

There is an almost religious reverence for Capitalism in the USA. Private asset ownership, minimal regulatory burdens, ease of hiring/firing, affordable capital, vibrant stock markets, and free market competition all certainly helped spur the massive prosperity and innovation we see in the USA today. American-style Capitalism has also helped raise prosperity in Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Cold War-era rivalry with murderous Commies in the USSR also fed a narrative of the USA as a defender of "freedom" being (falsely) conflated with a defense of Capitalism. Of course, Socialism did fail miserably in the USSR, Eastern Europe, India, and many other developing nations. No wonder then that the American rightwing likes to tout "government is the problem" and prefers "trickle down economics" emphasizing private enterprise over government investment.

In reality though, government investment and Socialism too have also played a huge positive role in the USA: repeated bailouts of both common people and corporations in many recessions, social safety nets (SSA, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), huge subsidies to many unprofitable agriculture sectors, public schools and universities with social good missions, federal research funding agencies (see fact 7 above), etc. Not to mention the famous military-industrial-Congress complex. Of course, none of this comes for free: taxation is the fuel of government.

Naturally, taxation remains a huge fault line. In particular, raising taxes on rich individuals, large corporate profits, and capital gains are hot button issues. Tensions also remain over widening income inequality, minimum wage and labor rights, cost of college education, cost of healthcare, environmental degradation, human-caused climate change, and corporations "capturing" politicians with basically legalized bribery. All that said, I find that large sections of American voters themselves dither often on such complex economic issues. So, it is common for "blue" states to elect "red" governors and vice versa. I think such cross-pollination of ideas from across the politico-economic spectrum is beneficial in the long run. But vigilance is crucial for all sides because there is such a thing as throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Fault Line 6: Guns

As with Capitalism, there is also an almost religious reverence for guns among most conservatives and libertarians in the USA. The Second Amendment offers individuals the right to "keep and bear arms" but also requires it to be "well-regulated." But differences in interpretation of the vague terms "arms" and "well-regulated" makes this another arena for repeated political tussles between the left and the right. This has led to a situation where mass shootings of Jews, Blacks, and other minority groups by White Christian supremacist or neo-Nazi terrorists and even slaughters of school children by armed gunmen are routinely rationalized.

Most liberals posit that US society will become safer by reducing gun ownership among civilians, as evidenced by the trajectories of other developed nations such as the UK and Australia. But given the USA's unique history of wars between colonial settlers and indigenous tribes, the Civil War, etc., as well as hangover from America's role in defeating actual government tyranny by Nazis in Germany and Commies in the USSR, many on the right are too distrustful of government--and their own compatriots--to give up guns. Of course, the vast majority of gun owners do not engage in unlawful violence. Many White nationalists also believe in a conspiracy theory that a federal "deep state" will one day seek to disempower Whites in favor of Blacks steered by the "globalist" Jewry in a second race-focused civil war called the "boogaloo." All this combined with the power of lobbies such as the NRA, votebank politics, and social media bubbles (also see fault line 7) means that even common sense regulations on gun control are hard to promulgate.

I also find it ironical how many Supreme Court justices contradict their own claimed originalism and textualism on the question of gun control. Going by originalism, only the "arms" that existed back when the Second Amendment was created are automatically permissible, not modern military-style weapons. Extrapolating, suppose pocket-sized tactical nukes get invented tomorrow--should all civilians be allowed to possess those "arms" too? Going by textualism, "well-regulated" gives elected legislators the power to regulate guns to ensure public safety, not diktats from unelected judges. Ultimately, I think US legislators must re-amend the Second Amendment to be more precise. But until then, such judicial hypocrisy is likely to keep damaging the credibility of the Supreme Court and perhaps of the Constitution itself.

Fault Line 7: Freedom of Speech (Hate Speech, Cancel Culture, Disinformation, Media Bias)

As an Indian, I am very familiar with the ethos of freedom of thought/speech/expression. The nature of logic, argumentation, and truth itself have been analyzed for millennia in Indian culture, captured in a cherished national motto from a Hindu scripture: "Truth alone triumphs." The pursuit of objective truths via evidence-based reasoning is also the basis of science. But also crucial is respect for the plurality of subjective truths--lived human experiences. The objective and the subjective exist in harmony and in conflict, simultaneously, endlessly. Alas, too many people nowadays seek a corrosive "absolutism," distorting or denying the importance of objective truths and/or the dismissing the reality of subjective truths.

There is an almost religious reverence for free speech in the USA, especially among libertarians. But as I have said before in this short talk, no nation on Earth offers "free" speech. Even the vaunted First Amendment of the US Constitution has many exceptions, upheld by unanimous Supreme Court benches. Most democracies also impose other common sense exceptions based on their national context. For instance, Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany but legal in the US; hate speech is illegal in India (and often abused by politicians) but legal in the US. In fact, the US has no legal notion of "hate" speech. While private employers and autonomous public employers are free to self-regulate hate speech and behavior, government itself cannot (easily) regulate or censor hate speech. Naturally, this has become another huge fault line in American society.

Curiously, many conservatives used to rail against free speech due to "blasphemy" against religions. Now the situation has flipped, with some liberals railing against free speech, dividing "classical" liberals from so-called "woke" progressives. The lack of legal redress on hate speech has led the free market, combined with groupthink, to create a new societal pitfall: cancel culture. Some corporations and even individuals sometimes get disproportionately "punished" (e.g., being fired from their job) due to hasty semi-popular pressure without due process grounded in evidence and reasoned debate. Of course, cancel culture is not entirely new--it is just the Web 2.0 avatar of the age-old practice of shunning and boycotts. However, the speed and specificity of social media creates a new chilling effect that can ultimately harm the very groups it claims to help.

To worsen matters, politically-motivated clickbait "fake news" agents combined with user engagement-obsessed and ads-worshipping Big Tech corporations are exacerbating more social psychological pitfalls: extremist rabbit holes, social media filter bubbles, and more general echo chambers. Many in Big Tech still live in denial that they are merely "neutral platforms" and not "editors." But if a shop profits from selling too many fake-news peddling newspapers, that shop will inevitably be seen as a fake-news enabler, even if it did not create/edit said content. Interestingly, the free market is already starting to correct for this issue, with Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. taking steps to combat the scourge of disinformation and hate speech. I hope government regulations also evolve prudently.

Leaving aside social media, I think a bigger harm has been caused to American society by for-profit regular news media corporations that peddle lies/bullshit and/or distort full truths--primarily on the right (e.g., Fox News and Breitbart) but also on the left (e.g., MSNBC and CNN). While the pitfall of "bothsidesism" applies to factual or legal debates, muzzling political debate over genuine policy differences is inimical to democratic ethos--no matter how uncomfortable, offensive, or even reprehensible the opinions. While the Popper dilemma of not tolerating violent intolerance does matter, prudence is paramount in avoiding both false positives and false negatives in such judgment calls because the faux comfort of short-term muzzling often obfuscates long-term societal harms. As such, freedom of speech is not freedom from legitimate consequences of speech. And all are free to reject or even condemn speech they disagree with.

Concluding Remarks

The American rightwing's assault on the human right to equality, secularism, ease of voting, and common sense gun control, as well as living in denial over systemic racism and runaway Capitalism is likely to make the USA weaker in the long term, not stronger. Even a glorious "White Christian ethnostate" will ultimately collapse if it seeks to re-subjugate women, income inequality gets obscene, public education is destroyed, the poor lack healthcare, and a destabilized climate disrupts food and water supplies. After all, the guillotine was brandished not by some sneaky globalist cabal of Jews, Blacks, and Gays but by ordinary Whites against Whites. In such a rock bottom, guns will not save America but only turn it into another Somalia.

The American leftwing's assault on civic nationalism, federalism, and common sense immigration control, as well as disproportionately hyperbolic mischaracterization of policy opponents as fascists, racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, etc. is also likely to make the USA weaker. Even a glorious "democratic socialist state" will ultimately collapse like the USSR or hit near-insolvency like India if Big Government fails to sustain a vibrant, innovative economic engine with competitive private enterprise to help raise prosperity for all. And just as India puts Indian interests first, France puts French interests first, and Japan puts Japanese interests first, there is nothing wrong with America putting American interests first. The USA is not the world's nanny.

The leftwing must fight smarter for their policies with a better grasp of the US Constitution. Street protests are not a substitute for the grinding work of changing hearts and minds to acquire power. The rightwing must end their policy hypocrisies, lest they throw the baby out with the bathwater. Dissent over government policies that lack majority support and trample on individual liberty is as American as anything. Not all liberals are Commies. Not all conservatives are Fascists. Policy differences must be hashed out via reasoned debates, not vulgar shouting matches. And all differences must be ultimately be settled via genuinely free and fair ballots whose outcomes must be respected by all. The alternative is the abyss: a prolonged pyrrhic civil war, and that is exactly what the real enemies of the USA in Moscow, Beijing, etc. not-so-secretly desire.

All that said, I have heard many Americans themselves say they prefer peaceful bifurcation, undoing a key outcome of the Civil War. But even after bifurcation, I suspect many of these fault lines will not vanish. As a person from the land of "a million mutinies," with its own long history of divisions and identity crises (some of which I wrote about here) and an actual bifurcation with people exchange but mass violence, I fully get what the USA is going through. While shallow analyses blame "the Russians!" the cold truth is that Putin only held a mirror to divisions already present in US society. The fault lines I listed above are real and deep.

Just living in denial and crying "vote Democrat" or "vote Republican" repeatedly will not suffice because it will not give one's preferred policies longevity. I hope Americans--on all sides of the politico-economic spectra--genuinely introspect over their nation's dire reality. Why do these divisions still exist? Why do they have such power over even rational people? Is the path ahead more fragmentation? Is history destiny? I believe it is high time the USA instituted an inclusive grassroots-led "truth and reconciliation commission" (like South Africa, Canada, etc.) to spur people-to-people conversations on such tough questions. And yes, that can include speaking about peaceful bifurcation.

Sigh. Despite all my sober analyses of America's deep fault lines and associated sociopolitical earthquakes, I still believe the principles that define(d?) the USA--a federal secular democratic republic with constitutional rule of law, a vibrant free market economy with innovative private enterprise and prudent government investment, a lead architect and a champion of universal human rights--remain strong. The arc of the moral universe is not straight, it never was. Twists and turns, leapfrogging and setbacks, joys and sorrows, are all part of the life path of any nation. The larger and more complex the nation, the more the twists and turns. But history is not destiny. The future is always in the hands of the present. The big question is: Do Americans care enough about their own nation--the whole nation--to avert a societal catastrophe?