A Short History of Physical & Ideological Distance in America

At this particular moment, most people in America feel as though some key decision for the future of our nation has been met and passed. Some greet this with remorse, decrying the end of western civilization – the death knell has sounded on the Great American Experiment. Others breathe more easily, knowing that at last we have chosen the path towards righting the injustices greed and manipulation have wrought on our nation.

The only thing our odd assortment of experiences and knowledge tells me is this: we are all as right as we want to be. Political beliefs, like economic beliefs, are myths that only become true if they are believed long enough by enough people. This is why, on the very short list of truly great American presidents, the only common factor among them all is that they were president. They did not all have the same political beliefs, or practice the same economic policy. There is no master key to unlocking the perfect set of words and actions that can make everything good again. Sometimes trickle-down economics work; sometimes increased social programs can provide the helping hand needed to aid a bruised workforce to its feet. The only thing that has consistently helped America to recover from the inevitable troughs and valleys in economic growth is the faith of the people in the chosen course, the commitment to their country, and the renewed belief that even though your neighbor might not look or sound or think like you, he or she is more like you than not like you.

The great land expanse of America has always been joined by a web of some kind, connected by a smattering of cities. Those strands have altered through time, and have required physical reinforcement when the ideological bonds have faltered. Transportation was difficult in the time leading up to the Civil War, and it was not uncommon that many Northerners would never see the South, and many Southerners would never venture North. The steamships and waterways were limited to the rivers and coasts. The Southern states could and did feel as disconnected from New York as the colonists had felt from London. Their revolt grappled with a distance that felt far greater until the Northern soldiers appeared on their doorsteps. After (and during) the Civil War, the Pacific Railroad Acts sought to rectify the growing ideological distance throughout the nation by connecting trains to shorten the physical distance throughout the nation.

In the mid twentieth-century, the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways came as a result of the realization, brought on by World War II, that we were not as far from the rest of the world as we had thought, and it was time to fortify our infrastructure. Roads and bridges connect more than places: they connect ideas and goods. This gave rise to the homogenization of the 1950s. Suddenly, a living room in Indiana might look identical to a living room on Long Island, and both would be tuning in to the same television show and being exposed to the same ideas. The Cold War compelled a unified cultural front. The government had a vested interest in winning the cultural wars with the Soviet Union right along with the space race. For a push like that, everyone had to be on board.

The 1960s and Vietnam shook up whatever complacency our nation had been stewing about in, until Ronald Regan came along and reinvented the American Dream: the white picket fence, financial and physical security, and a chance for lasting peace with the Soviet yin to our ideological yang. That era of new hope sailed on through the prosperous Clinton era until the Supreme Court carved out a V-shaped continental divide between Bush and Gore supporters. Even though on September 12, 2001, nearly every person in America was glad George W. Bush was president, in January of 2009, he was booed on the steps of the Capitol just moments before Barack Obama was sworn in.

So here we are again – at the point where upheaval and discord threaten to tear our country apart. The ties the bind our nation are the most theoretical they have ever been. We are connected through technology and communication, nebulous waves of data that cannot depict the nuance or momentary shared exchange necessary to feel in accord with another person. Physical encounters between rural and urban life are one-way or not at all. Generations of farm kids and would-be townspeople are drawn to cities for jobs, glamour, or opportunity, but few urbanites escape much farther than the suburbs.

So frankly, no wonder the places that vote Red vote very, very Red, and the places that vote Blue vote very, very Blue. No wonder you have a hard time understanding how some person you have never met might not believe the same things you do. Probably, most people you know were raised where you were, or got out for the same reasons you did. But the biggest mistake you could make is thinking that you and the person living a thousand miles away amidst very different surroundings have nothing in common. If you believe that, it is the result of ratings-driven media and single facts, taken out of context – the worst examples used to depict a type of person, which then becomes a placeholder for the hundreds of thousands of people you will never meet. When people are types, welfare might mean only crack addicts who refuse to work, or conservative might mean racist bigots.

All I know for sure is that any category you can put another person in that allows you to spend less time thinking about him, or questioning her motivation is, at the very best, only part of the story – and the part of the story any novelist might lead but never end with. In this cold and chilling age of the individual, we can choose the community we belong to through the means of our computer or phone, adopt any identity we wish if we are not thrilled with our own, or embrace our family and friends and fortify our own stronghold against the rest of the world. Pictures of natural disasters happening in our own country do not have to evoke any more emotion in us than pictures of natural disasters happening anywhere else in the world.

But if the strength of our nation is only as strong as our ties as a nation and if we are all as right as we want to be, the dream of America can fizzle and fade. As tempting as it may be to think, the results of the most recent election are not a sign of where we are headed, but rather a sign of where we are now. If we believe the other political party is trying to take advantage of us, or lacks heart, and we respond in kind, our actions will bear that truth out. But the future of our country will not be decided by any elected official: it is entirely on us whether we choose a future for a nation, or for the separate individuals who happen to be living there.