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Copyright Atlantic Monthly Company Dec 2001
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[Headnote]
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The electoral map of the 2000 presidential race became fam=
ous:
big blocks of red (denoting states that went for Bush) stretched across=
the
heartland, with brackets of blue (denoting states for Gore) along the
coasts. Our Blue America correspondent has ventured repeatedly into Red
territory. He asks the question-- after September 11, a pressing one-Do=
our
differences effectively split us into two nations, or are they just cra=
cks
in a still-united whole?
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Sixty-five miles =
from
where I am writing this sentence is a place with no Starbucks, no Pottery
Barn, no Borders or Barnes & Noble. No blue New York Times delivery b=
ags
dot the driveways on Sunday mornings. In this place people don't complain
that Woody Allen isn't as funny as he used to be, because they never thou=
ght
he was funny. In this place you can go to a year's worth of dinner parties
without hearing anyone quote an apercu he first heard on Charlie Rose. The
people here don't buy those little rear-window stickers when they go to a
summer-- vacation spot so that they can drive around with "MV"
decals the rest of the year, for the most part they don't even go to Mart=
ha's
Vineyard.
The place I'm tal=
king
about goes by different names. Some call it America. Others call it Middle America. It has also come to be known as <=
/span>Red America<=
/b>, in reference to=
the
maps that were produced on the night of the 2000 presidential election.
People in Blue America, which is my part of America, tend to live aroun=
d big
cities on the coasts. People in Red America tend to live on farms or in small t=
owns
or small cities far away from the coasts. Things are different there.
Everything that p=
eople
in my neighborhood do without motors, the people in Red America<=
/b> do with motors. =
We
sail; they powerboat. We cross-country ski; they snowmobile. We hike; they
drive ATVs. We have vineyard tours; they have tractor pulls. When it come=
s to
yard work, they have rider mowers; we have illegal aliens.
Different sorts of
institutions dominate life in these two places. In Red America<=
/b> churches are
everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere. In Red America<=
/b> they have QVC, t=
he Pro
Bowlers Tour, and hunting. In Blue America we have NPR, Doris Kearns Good=
win,
and socially conscious investing. In Red America the Wal=
-Marts
are massive, with parking lots the size of state parks. In Blue America t=
he
stores are small but the markups are big. You'll rarely see a Christmas s=
tore
in Blue America, but in Red America, even in July, you'll come upon stores
selling fake Christmas trees, wreath-decorated napkins, Rudolph the Red-N=
osed
Reindeer collectible thimbles and spoons, and little snow-covered village=
s.
We in the coastal=
metro
Blue areas read more books and attend more plays than the people in the R=
ed
heartland. We're more sophisticated and cosmopolitan-just ask us about our
alumni trips to China or Provence, or o=
ur
interest in Buddhism. But don't ask us, please, what life in Red America<=
/b> is like. We don't
know. We don't know who Tim LaHaye and Jerry =
B.
Jenkins are, even though the novels they have co-written have sold about =
40
million copies over the past few years. We don't know what James Dobson s=
ays
on his radio program, which is listened to by millions. We don't know abo=
ut
Reba or Travis. We don't know what happens in mega-churches on Wednesday
evenings, and some of us couldn't tell you the difference between a
fundamentalist and an evangelical, let alone describe what it means to be=
a
Pentecostal. Very few of us know what goes on in <=
st1:City
w:st=3D"on">Branson, Missouri,
even though it has seven million visitors a year, or could name even five
NASCAR drivers, although stock-car races are the best-attended sporting
events in the country. We don't know how to shoot or dean a rifle. We can=
't
tell a military officer's rank by looking at his insignia. We don't know =
what
soy beans look like when they're growing in a field.
All we know, or a=
ll we
think we know, about Red America is that millions and millions of its people live quie=
tly
underneath flight patterns, many of them are racist and homophobic, and w=
hen
you see them at highway rest stops, they're often really fat and their
clothes are too tight.
And apparently we=
don't
want to know any more than that. One can barely find any books at Amazon.=
com
about what it is like to live in small-town America-or, at least, any b=
ooks
written by normal people who grew up in small towns, liked them, and stay=
ed
there. The few books that do exist were written either by people who left=
the
heartland because they hated it (Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent, for
example) or by urbanites who moved to Red America as part of some life-simplification
plan (Moving to a Small Town: A Guidebook for Moving from Urban to Rural
America; National Geographic's Guide to Small Town Escapes). Apparently no
publishers or members of the Blue bookbuying =
public
are curious about Red America as seen through Red America's eyes. CROSSING T=
HE
MEATLOAF LINE ver the past several months, my
interest piqued by those stark blocks of color on the election-night maps=
, I
have every now and then left my home in Montgomery =
County,
Maryland, and driven sixty-five miles
northwest to Franklin County, in south-central Pennsylvania. Montgomery County=
is one of the steaming-hot centers of the great espresso machine that is =
Blue
America. It is just over the border from northwestern Washington,
D.C., and it is full of upper-middle-c=
lass
towns inhabited by lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, and establishment
journalists like me-- towns like Chevy Chase, Potomac, and Bethesda (where I live). Its central =
artery
is a burgeoning high-tech corridor with a multitude of sparkling new offi=
ce
parks housing technology companies such as United Information Systems and
Sybase, and pioneering biotech firms such as Celera Genomics and Human Ge=
nome
Sciences. When I drive to Franklin
County, I take Ro=
ute
270. After about forty-five minutes I pass a Cracker Barrel-Red America condensed into
chain-restaurant form. I've crossed the Meatloaf Line; from here on there
will be a lot fewer sun-dried-tomato concoctions on restaurant menus and a
lot more meatloaf platters.
Franklin County<=
/st1:PlaceName> is Red America<=
/b>. It's a rural co=
unty,
about twenty-five miles west of Gettysburg,
and it includes the towns of Waynesboro,=
Chambersburg, and Mercersburg. It was originally =
settled
by the Scotch-Irish, and has plenty of Brethren and Mennonites along with=
a
fast-growing population of evangelicals. The joke that Pennsylvanians tell
about their state is that it has Philadelphia
on one end, Pittsburgh on the other, and=
Alabama in the=
middle.
Franklin County
is in the Alabama
part. It strikes me as I drive there that even though I am going north ac=
ross
the Mason-Dixon line, I feel as if I w=
ere
going south. The local culture owes more to Nashvil=
le,
Houston, and Daytona than to Washington,
Philadelphia, or =
New York.
I shuttled back a=
nd
forth between Franklin and Montgomery Counti=
es
because the cultural differences between the two places are great, though=
the
geographic distance is small. The two places are not perfect microcosms of
Red and Blue America. The part of Montgomery
County I am here
describing is largely the Caucasian part. Moreover, Franklin
County is in a Red part of a B=
lue
state: overall, Pennsylvani=
a
went for Gore. And I went to Franklin
County aware that=
there
are tremendous differences within Red America, just as there are within Blue. Franklin County
is quite different from, say, Scottsdale=
, Arizona, just as Bethesda
is quite different from Oakl=
and,
California
Nonetheless, the
contrasts between the two counties leap out, and they are broadly suggest=
ive
of the sorts of contrasts that can be seen nationwide. When Blue America
talks about social changes that convulsed society, it tends to mean the 1=
960s
rise of the counterculture and feminism. When Red America<=
/b> talks about chan=
ges
that convulsed society, it tends to mean World War IL
which shook up old town establishments and led to a great surge of indust=
ry.
Red America<=
/b> makes social
distinctions that Blue America doesn't. For example, in Franklin County
there seems to be a distinction between those fiercely independent people=
who
live in the hills and people who live in the valleys. I got a hint of the
distinct and, to me, exotic hill culture when a hill dweller asked me why=
I
thought hunting for squirrel and rabbit had gone out of fashion. I thought
maybe it was just more fun to hunt something bigger. But he said,
"McDonald's. It's cheaper to get a hamburger at McDonald's than to go
out and get it yourself."
There also seems =
to be
an important distinction between men who work outdoors and men who work
indoors. The outdoor guys wear faded black T-shirts they once picked up a=
t a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert =
and
wrecked jeans that appear to be washed faithfully at least once a year.
They've got wraparound NASCAR sunglasses, maybe a NAPA auto parts cap, and
hair cut in a short wedge up front but flowing down over their shoulders =
in
the back-a cut that is known as a mullet, which is sort of a cross between
Van Halen's style and Kenny Rogers's, and is =
the
ugliest hairdo since every hairdo in the seventies. The outdoor guys are
heavily accessorized, and their accessories are meant to show how hard th=
ey
work, so they will often have a gigantic wad of keys hanging from a belt
loop, a tape measure strapped to the belt, a pocket knife on a string tuc=
ked
into the front pants pocket, and a pager or a cell phone affixed to the h=
ip,
presumably in case some power lines go down somewhere and need emergency
repair. Outdoor guys have a thing against sleeves. They work so hard that
they've got to keep their arm muscles unencumbered and their armpit hair
fully ventilated, so they either buy their shirts sleeveless or rip the
sleeves off their T-shirts first thing, leaving bits of fringe hanging ov=
er
their BAD TO THE BONE tattoos.
The guys who work
indoors can't project this rugged proletarian image. It's simply not that
romantic to be a bank-loan officer or a shift manager at the local
distribution center. So the indoor guys adopt a look that a smart-ass,
sneering Blue American might call Bible-academy casual-- maybe Haggar slacks, which they bought at a dry-goods sto=
re
best known for its appliance department, and a short=
sleeved
white Van Heusen shirt from the Bon-Ton. Their image projects not "I
work hard" but I'm a devoted family man." A lot of indoor guys =
have
a sensitive New Age demeanor. When they talk about the days their kids we=
re
born, their eyes take on a soft Garth Brooks expression, and they tear up.
They exaggerate how sinful they were before they were born again. On
Saturdays they are patio masters, barbecuing on their gas grills in full
Father's Day-apron regalia.
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![3DIllustration](3D"lgapBrooksPoliticalsocialRedAmerica_files/image003.jpg") =
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At first I though=
t the
indoor guys were the faithful, reliable ones: the ones who did well in
school, whereas the outdoor guys were druggies. But after talking with
several preachers in Fr=
anklin
County, I learned=
that
it's not that simple. Sometimes the guys who look like bikers are the most
devoted community-service volunteers and church attendees.
The kinds of
distinctions we make in Blue America are different. In my world the easie=
st
way to categorize people is by headroom needs. People who went to business
school or law school like a lot of headroom. They buy humongous sport-uti=
lity
vehicles that practically have cathedral ceilings over the front seats. T=
hey
live in homes the size of country clubs, with soaring entry atriums so hi=
gh
that they could practically fly a kite when they come through the front d=
oor.
These big-headroom people tend to be predators: their jobs have them
negotiating and competing all day. They spend small fortunes on dry clean=
ing.
They grow animated when talking about how much they love their blackberri=
es.
They fill their enormous wall space with huge professional family
portraits-Mom and Dad with their perfect kids (dressed in light-blue oxfo=
rd
shirts) laughing happily in an orchard somewhere.
Small-headroom pe=
ople
tend to have been liberal-arts majors, and they have liberal-arts jobs. T=
hey
get passiveaggressive pleasure from demonstra=
ting
how modest and environmentally sensitive their living containers are. They
hate people with SUVs, and feel virtuous driving around in their
low-ceilinged little Hondas, which often display a RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
bumper sticker or one bearing an image of a fish with legs, along with the
word "Darwin:" just to show how intellectually superior to fund=
amentalist
Christians they are.
Some of the bigge=
st
differences between Red and Blue America show up on statistical tables.
Ethnic diversity is one. In Montgomery
County 60 percent=
of
the population is white, 15 percent is black, 12 percent is Hispanic, and=
11
percent is Asian. In Franklin County 95 percent of the population is whit=
e.
White people work the gas-station pumps and the 7-Eleven counters. (This =
is
something one doesn't often see in my part of the country.) Although the
nation is growing more diverse, it's doing so only in certain spots.
According to an analysis of the 2000 census by Bill Frey, a demographer at
the Milken Institute, well over half the coun=
ties
in America
are still at least 85 percent white.
Another big thing=
is
that, according to 1990 census data, in Franklin County
only 12 percent of the adults have college degrees and only 69 percent ha=
ve
high school diplomas. In Montgomery
County 50 percent=
of
the adults have college degrees and 91 percent have high school diplomas.=
The
education gap extends to the children. At Walt=
Whitman High
School, a public school in Bethesda, the average SAT scores are =
601
verbal and 622 math, whereas the national aver=
age is
506 verbal and 514 math. In Franklin
County where people are quite =
proud
of their schools, the average SAT scores at, for example, the Waynesboro area =
high school are 495 verbal and 480 math. More and more ki=
ds in Franklin County
are going on to college, but it is hard to believe that their prospects w=
ill
be as bright as those of the kids in Montgomery County=
and the rest of upscale Blue America.
Because the infor=
mation
age rewards education with money, it's not surprising that Montgomery County<=
/st1:PlaceType>
is much richer than Fra=
nklin
County. According=
to
some estimates, in Mont=
gomery
County 51 percent=
of
households have annual incomes above $75,000, and the average household
income is $100,365. In =
Franklin
County only 16 pe=
rcent
of households have incomes above $75,000, and the average is $51,872.
A major employer =
in Montgomery County<=
/st1:PlaceType>
is the National Institutes of Health, which grows like a scientific boomt=
own
in Bethesda.
A major economic engine in Franklin
County is the
interstate highway Route 81. Trucking companies have gotten sick of fight=
ing
the congestion on Route 95, which runs up the Blue corridor along the
northeast coast, so they move their stuff along 81, farther inland. Sever=
al
new distribution centers have been built along 81 in Franklin County,
and some of the workers who were laid off when their factories closed,
several years ago, are now settling for $8.00 or $9.00 an hour loading bo=
xes.
The two counties =
vote
differently, of course-the differences, on a nationwide scale, were what =
led
to those redand-blue maps. Like upscale areas
everywhere, from Silicon Valley to Chicago's North Shore
to suburban Connecticut, Montgomery County=
supported the Democratic ticket in last year's presidential election, by a
margin of 63 percent to 34 percent. Meanwhile, like almost all of rural <=
st1:country-region
w:st=3D"on">America, Franklin County
went Republican, by 67 percent to 30 percent
However, other vo=
ting
patterns sometimes obscure the Red-Blue cultural divide. For example,
minority voters all over the country overwhelmingly supported the Democra=
tic
ticket last November. But-in many respects, at least-blacks and Hispanics=
in Red America<=
/b> are more
traditionalist than blacks and Hispanics in Blue America, just as their w=
hite
counter-parts are. For example, the Pew
Research Center
for the People and the Press, in Washington,
D.C., recently found that=
45
percent of minority members in Red states agree with the statement "=
AIDS
might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior," but only 31
percent of minority members in Blue states do. Similarly, 40 percent of
minorities in Red states believe that school boards should have the right=
to
fire homosexual teachers, but only 21 percent of
minorities in Blue states d=
o.
FROM CRACKS TO A =
CHASM?
hese differences are so many and so stark that
they lead to some pretty troubling questions: Are Americans any longer a
common people? Do we have one T national conversation and one national
culture? Are we loyal to the same institutions and the same values? How do
people on one side of the divide regard those on the other?
I went to Franklin County
because I wanted to get a sense of how deep the divide really is, to see =
how
people there live, and to gauge how different their lives are from those =
in
my part of America=
.
I spoke with ministers, journalists, teachers, community leaders, and pre=
tty
much anyone I ran across. I consulted with pollsters, demographers, and
market-research firms. Toward the end of my project the World Trade
Center and the Pe=
ntagon
were attacked. This put a new slant on my little investigation. In the da=
ys
immediately following September 11 the evidence seemed clear that despite=
our
differences, we are still a united people. American flags flew everywhere=
in Franklin County
and in Montgomery
County. Patriotism
surged. Pollsters started to measure Americans' reactions to the events.
Whatever questions they asked, the replies were near unanimous. Do you
support a military response against terror? More than four fifths of
Americans said yes. Do you support a military response even if it means
thousands of U.S.<=
/st1:place>
casualties? More than three fifths said yes. There were no significant
variations across geographic or demographic lines.
A sweeping feelin=
g of
solidarity was noticeable in every neighborhood, school, and workplace.
Headlines blared, "A NATION UNITED" and "UNITED STATE.' An
attack had been made on the very epicenter of Blue America-downtown Manhattan. And i=
n a
flash all the jokes about and seeming hostility toward New Yorkers vanish=
ed,
to be replaced by an outpouring of respect, support, and love. The old
hostility came to seem merely a sort of sibling rivalry, which means noth=
ing
when the family itself is under threat.
But very soon the=
re
were hints that the solidarity was fraying. A few stray notes of dissent =
were
sounded in the organs of Blue America. Susan Sontag wrote a sour piece in=
The
New Yorker about how depressing it was to see what she considered to be a
simplistically pro-American reaction to the attacks. At rallies on college
campuses across the country speakers pointed out that America had been bombing ot=
her
countries for years, and turnabout was fair play. On one NPR talk show I
heard numerous callers express unease about what they saw as a crude
us-versus-them mentality behind President Bush's rhetoric. Katha Pollitt wrote in =
The
Nation that she would not permit her daughter to hang the American flag f=
rom
the living-room window, because, she felt, it "stands for jingoism a=
nd
vengeance and war." And there was evidence that among those with les=
s--
strident voices, too, differences were beginning to show. Polls revealed =
that
people without a college education were far more confident than people wi=
th a
college education that the military could defeat the terrorists. People in
the South were far more eager than people in the rest of the country for =
an
American counterattack to begin.
It started to seem
likely that these cracks would widen once the American response got under
way, when the focus would be not on firemen and rescue workers but on the
Marines, the CIA, and the special-operations forces. If the war was
protracted, the cracks could widen into a chasm, as they did during Vietnam. Red America<=
/b>, the home of
patriotism and military service (there's a big military-recruitment cente=
r in
downtown Chambersburg), would undoubtedly support the war effort, but wou=
ld
Blue America (there's a big gourmet dog bakery in downtown Bethesda) deci=
de
that a crude military response would only deepen animosities and make thi=
ngs
worse?
So toward the end=
of my
project I investigated =
Franklin
County with a
heightened sense of gravity and with much more urgency. If America was not firmly unit=
ed in
the early days of the conflict, we would certainly not be united later, w=
hen
the going got tough.
"THE PEOPLE =
VERSUS
THE POWERFUL"
There are a coupl=
e of
long-standing theories about why America is divided. One of =
the
main ones holds that the division is along class lines, between the haves=
and
the have-nots. This theory is popular chiefly on the left and can be foun=
d in
the pages of The American Prospect and other liberal magazines; in news
reports by liberal journalists such as Donald L. Bar=
lett
and James B. Steele, of Time, and in books such as Middle Class Dreams
(1995), by the Clinton and Gore pollster Stanley Greenberg, and America's
Forgotten Ma)ori: =
Why the
White Working Class Sill Matters (2000), by the demographer Ruy Teixeira and the so=
cial
scientist Joel Rogers.
According to this
theory, during most of the twentieth century gaps in income between the r=
ich
and the poor in Am=
erica
gradually shrank. Then came the information age. The rich started getting
spectacularly richer, the poor started getting poorer, and wages for the
middle class stagnated, at best. Over the previous decade, these writers
emphasized, remuneration for top-level executives had skyrocketed: now the
average CEO made 116 times as much as the average rank-and-file worker.
Assembly-line workers found themselves competing for jobs against Third World workers who earned less than a dollar=
an
hour. Those who had once labored at well-paying blue-collar jobs were for=
ced
to settle for poorly paying service-economy jobs without benefits. <=
/o:p>
People with gradu=
ate
degrees have done well over the past couple of decades: their real hourly
wages climbed by 13 percent from 1979 to 1997, according to Teixeira and Rogers. But those with only some colle=
ge
education saw their wages fall by nine percent, while those with only high
school diplomas saw their wages fall by 12 percent, and high school dropo=
uts
saw a stunning 26 percent decline in their pay.
Such trends have
created a new working class, these writers arg=
ue-not
a traditional factory-and-mill working class but a suburban and small-town
working class, made up largely of service workers and low-level white-col=
lar
employees. Teixeira and Rogers estimate that =
the
average household income for this group, which accounts for about 55 perc=
ent
of American adults, is roughly $42,000. "It is not hard to imagine h=
ow
[recent economic trends] must have felt to the forgotten majority marC they write.
As at least part =
of America<=
/st1:place>
was becoming ever more affluent, an affluence that was well covered on
television and in the evening news, he did not seem to be making much
progress. What could he be doing wrong to be faring so poorly? Why couldn=
't
he afford what others could? And why were they moving ahead while he was
standing still? Stanley Greenberg tailored Al Gore's presidential campaig=
n to
appeal to such voters. Gore's most significant slogan was "The People
Versus the Powerful,' which was meant to rally members of the middle class
who felt threatened by "powerful forces" beyond their control, =
such
as HMOs, tobacco companies, big corporations, and globalization, and to
channel their resentment against the upper class. Gore dressed down
throughout his campaign in the hope that these middle-class workers would
identify with him.
Driving from Bethesda to Franklin
County, one can s=
ee
that the theory of a divide between the classes has a
certain plausibility. In Montgomery
County we have Saks Fifth Avenue,
Carrier, Anthropologie, B=
rooks
Brothers. In Franklin County they have Dollar General and Value City, along with a plethora of
secondhand stores. It's as if Franklin
County has only
forty-five coffee tables, which are sold again and again.
When the locals a=
re
asked about their economy, they tell a story very similar to the one that
Greenberg, Teixeira, Rogers, and the rest of =
the
wage-stagnation liberals recount. There used t=
o be
plenty of good factory jobs in Franklin
County, and people
could work at those factories for life. But some of the businesses, inclu=
ding
the textile company J. Schoeneman, once Franklin County's largest manufacturer, h=
ave
closed. Others have moved offshore. The remaining manufacturers, such as
Grove Worldwide and JLG Industries, which both make cranes and aerial
platforms, have laid off workers. The local Army depot, Letterkenny,
has radically shrunk its work force. The new jobs are in distribution cen=
ters
or nursing homes. People tend to repeat the same phrase: "We've taken
some hits."
And yet when they=
are
asked about the broader theory, whether there is class conflict between t=
he
educated affluents and the stagnant middles, =
they
stare blankly as if suddenly the interview were being conducted in Aramai=
c. I
kept asking, Do you feel that the highly educa=
ted
people around, say, New York and Washington are=
getting
all the goodies? Do you think there is resentment toward all the latte
sippers who shop at Nieman Marcus? Do you see=
a
gulf between high-income people in the big cities and middleincome
people here? I got only polite, fumbling answers as people tried to figure
out what the hell I was talking about.
When I rephrased =
the
question in more-general terms, as Do you believe the country is divided
between the haves and the have-nots?, everyone
responded decisively: yes. But as the conversation continued, it became d=
ear
that the people saying yes did not consider themselves to be among the
have-nots. Even people with incomes well below the median thought of
themselves as haves.
What I found was
entirely consistent with the election returns from November of last year.
Gore's pitch failed miserably among the voters it was intended to target:
nationally he lost among non-college-educated white voters by 17 points a=
nd
among non-college-educated white men by 29 points. But it worked beautifu=
lly
on the affluent, educated class: for example, Gore won among women with
graduate degrees by 22 points. The lesson seems to be that if you run a
campaign under the slogan "The People Versus the PowerfuL"
you will not do well in the places where "the people" live, but=
you
will do fantastically well in the places where "the powerful" l=
ive.
This phenomenon mirrors, on a larger scale, one I noted a couple of years
ago, when I traveled the country for a year talking about Bobos
in Paradise, a book I had written on upscale America. The richer the com=
munity,
the more likely I was to be asked about wage inequality. In middle-class
communities the subject almost never came up.
Hanging around Franklin County, one begins to understand=
some
of the reasons that people there don't spend much time worrying about eco=
nomic
class lines. The first and most obvious one is that although the incomes =
in
Franklin County are lower than those in Montgomery County, living expenses
are also lower-very much so. Driving from Mont=
gomery
County to Franklin County
is like driving through an invisible deflation machine. Gas is thirty, fo=
rty,
or even fifty cents a gallon cheaper in Franklin County.
I parked at meters that accepted only pennies and nickels. When I got a
parking ticket in Chambersburg, the fi=
ne was
$3.00. At the department store in Greencastle there were racks and racks =
of
blouses for $9.99.
The biggest diffe=
rence
is in real-estate prices. In Franklin
County one can bu=
y a
nice four-bedroom split-level house with about 2,200 square feet of living
space for $150,000 to $180,000. In Bethesda
that same house would cost about $450,000. (According to the Coldwell Ban=
ker
Real Estate Corporation, that house would sell for $784,000 in Greenwich, Connecticut;
for $812,000 in Manhattan Beach, California; and for about $1.23 million in Palo Alto, California.)
Some of the peopl=
e I
met in Franklin
County were just
getting by. Some were in debt and couldn't afford to buy their kids the
Christmas presents they wanted to. But I didn't find many who assessed th=
eir
own place in society according to their income. Rather, the people I met
commonly told me that although those in affluent places like Manhattan
and Bethesda might make more money and h=
ave
more-exciting jobs, they are the unlucky ones, because they don't get to =
live
in Franklin County. They don't get to enjoy =
the
beautiful green hillsides, the friendly people, the wonderful church grou=
ps
and volunteer organizations. They may be nice people and all, but they are
certainly not as happy as we are.
Another thing I f=
ound
is that most people don't think sociologically. They don't compare themse=
lves
with faraway millionaires who appear on their TV screens. They compare
themselves with their neighbors. "One of the challenges we face is t=
hat
it is hard to get people to look beyond the fourstat=
e
region;' Lynne Woehrle, a sociologist at Wils=
on
College, in Chambersburg, told me, referring to the cultural zone compose=
d of
the nearby rural areas in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and
Virginia. Many of the people in Franklin
County view the lifestyles of =
the
upper class in California or Seattle much the way we in Blue America might view=
the
lifestyle of someone in Eritrea
or Mongolia-- or, fo=
r that
matter, Butte, Montana. Such ways of life are dista=
nt and
basically irrelevant, except as a source of academic interest or titillat=
ion.
One man in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, told me about a friend=
who
had recently bought a car. "He paid twenty-five thousand dollars for
that car!" he exclaimed, his eyes wide with amazement. "He got =
it
fully loaded" I didn't tell him that in Bethesda almost no one but a college =
kid
pays as little as $25,000 for a car.
Franklin County<=
/st1:PlaceName> is a world in wh=
ich
there is little obvious inequality, and the standard of living is reasona=
bly
comfortable. Youth-soccer teams are able to raise money for a summer trip=
to
England; the Lowe's hardware superstore carries Laura Ashley carpets; many
people have pools, although they are almost always above ground; the plan=
ning
commission has to cope with an increasing number of cars in the county ev=
ery
year, even though the population is growing only gradually. But the sort =
of
high-end experiences that are everywhere in Montgomery County=
are entirely missing here. <=
/p>
On my journeys to=
Franklin County, I set a goal: I was goin=
g to
spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive
thing on the menu-steak au jus, "slippery beef pot pied or whatever-I
always failed. I began asking people to direct me to the most-expensive
places in town. They would send me to Red Lobster or Applebee's. I'd go i=
nto
a restaurant that looked from the outside as if it had some pretensions-m=
aybe
a "Les Desserts" glass cooler for the key-lime pie and the tapi=
oca
pudding. I'd scan the menu and realize that I'd been beaten once again. I=
went
through great vats of chipped beef and "seafood delight" trying=
to
drop twenty dollars. I waded through enough surf-and-turfs and enough cre=
amed
corn to last a lifetime. I could not do it.
No wonder people =
in
Franklin County have no class resentment or class consciousness; where th=
ey
live, they can afford just about anything that is for sale. (In Montgomery County, however-and this is one =
of the
most striking contrasts between the two counties-almost nobody can say th=
at.
In Blue America, unless you are very, very rich, there is always, all aro=
und
you, stuff for sale that you cannot afford.) And if they sought to improve
their situation, they would look only to themselves. If a person wants to
make more money, the feeling goes, he or she h=
ad
better work hard and think like an entrepreneur.
I could barely get
fifteen minutes into an interview before the local work ethic came up. Ka=
ren
Jewell, who helps to oversee the continuing-education program for the loc=
al Perm State
branch campus, told me, "People are very =
vested
in what they do. There's an awareness of where they fit in the organizati=
on.
They feel empowered to be agents of change" People do work extremely
hard in Franklin
County=
|
![3DIllustration](3D"lgapBrooksPoliticalsocialRedAmerica_files/image004.jpg") =
|
|
even people in suppos=
edly
dead-end jobs. You can see it in little things, such as drugstore shelves.
The drugstores in Bethesda look the way =
Rome must have =
looked
after a visit from the Visigoths. But in Franklin County
the boxes are in perfect little rows. Shelves are fully stocked, and cans=
are
evenly spaced. The floors are less dusty than those in a microchip-proces=
sing
plant. The nail clippers on a rack by the cash register are arranged with=
a
precision that would put the Swiss to shame.
There are few uni=
ons in
Franklin County. People abhor the thought=
of
depending on welfare; they consider themselves masters of their own econo=
mic
fate. "People are really into the free market here," Bill Pukmel, formerly the editor of the weekly paper in =
Chambersburg, told me.
In sum, I found
absolutely no evidence that a Stanley Greenberg-prompted Democratic Party=
(or
a Pat Buchanan-- led Republican Party) could mobilize white middle-class
Americans on the basis of class consciousness. I found no evidence that
economic differences explain much of anything about the divide between Red
and Blue America.
Ted Hale, a Presb=
yterian
minister in the western part of the county, spoke of the matter this way:
"There's nowhere near as much resentment as you would expect. People
have come to understand that they will struggle financially. It's part of
their identity. But the economy is not their god. That's the thing some
others don't understand. People value a sense of community far more than =
they
do their portfolio." Hale, who worked at a church in East
Hampton, New York, before =
coming
to Franklin County,
said that he saw a lot more economic resentment in New York.
Hale's observatio=
ns are
supported by nationwide polling data. Pew has conducted a broad survey of=
the
differences between Red and Blue states. The survey found that views on
economic issues do not explain the different voting habits in the two
regions. There simply isn't much of the sort of economic dissatisfaction =
that
could drive a class-based political movement. Eighty-five percent of
Americans with an annual household income between $30,000 and $50,000 are
satisfied with their housing. Nearly 70 percent are satisfied with the ki=
nd
of car they can afford. Roughly two thirds are satisfied with their furni=
ture
and their ability to afford a night out. These levels of satisfaction are=
not
very different from those found in upper-middle-class America.
The Pew researche=
rs
found this sort of trend in question after question. Part of the draft of
their report is titled "Economic Divide Dissolves." =
A LOT
OF RELIGION BUT FEW CRUSADERS
This leaves us wi=
th the
second major hypothesis about the nature of the divide between Red and Bl=
ue
America, which comes mainly from conservatives: America is divided between =
two
moral systems. Red America is traditional, religious, self-disciplined, and
patriotic. Blue Am=
erica
is modern, secular, self-expressive, and discomfited by blatant displays =
of
patriotism. Proponents of this hypothesis in its most radical form contend
that America
is in the midst of a culture war, with two opposing armies fighting on be=
half
of their views. The historian Gertrude Himmelfarb
offered a more moderate picture in One Nation, Two Cultures (1999), in wh=
ich
she argued that although America
is not fatally split, it is deeply divided, between a heartland conservat=
ive
population that adheres to a strict morality and a liberal population that
lives by a loose one. The political journalist Michael Barone
put it this way in a recent essay in National Journal: "The two Americas
apparent in the 48 percent to 48 percent 2000 election are two nations of
different faiths. One is observant, tradition-minded, moralistic.
The other is unobservant, liberation-minded, relativi=
stic."
The values-divide
school has a fair bit of statistical evidence on its side. Whereas income=
is
a poor predictor of voting patterns, church attendance-as Barone
points outis a pretty good one. Of those who =
attend
religious services weekly (42 percent of the electorate), 59 percent voted
for Bush, 39 percent for Gore. Of those who seldom or never attend religi=
ous
services (another 42 percent), 56 percent voted for Gore, 39 percent for
Bush.
The Pew data reve=
al
significant divides on at least a few values issues. Take, for example, t=
he
statement "We will all be called before God on Judgment Day to answer
for our sins." In Red states 70 percent of the people believe that
statement. In Blue states only 50 percent do.
One can feel the
religiosity in Franklin=
County after a si=
ngle
day's visit. It's on the bumper stickers: WARNING: IN CASE OF RAPTURE THIS
VEHICLE WILL BE UNMANNED. REAL TRUCKERS TALK ABOUT JESUS ON CHANNEL 10. I=
t's
on the radio. The airwaves are filled not with the usual mixture of hit t=
unes
but with evangelicals preaching the gospel. The book section of Wal-Mart
features titles such as The Beginner's Guide to Fasting, Deepen Your
Conversation with God and Are We Living in the End Times? Some general st=
ores
carry the "Heroes of Faith" series, which consists of smaller
biographies of Williams Carey, George Muller, and other notable missionar=
ies,
ministers, and theologians--notable in Red America, that is, but largely unknown where=
I
live.
Chambersburg and its vicinity=
have
eighty-five churches and one synagogue. The Bethesda-Chevy Chase area, wh=
ich
has a vastly greater population, has forty-five churches and five syngogues. Professors at the local college in Chambersburg have learned not to schedule public
lectures on Wednesday nights, because everybody is at prayer meetings.
Events that are p=
art of
daily life in Franklin<=
/st1:PlaceName>
County are unhear=
d of
in most of Blue America. One United Brethren minister told me that he is
asked to talk about morals in the public school as part of the health and
sex-education curriculum, and nobody raises a fuss. A number of schools h=
ave
a "Bible release program," whereby elementary school students ar allowed to l=
eave
school for an hour a week to attend Bible-study meetings. At an elementary
school in Waynesboro
the Gideons used to distribute Bible to any
students who wanted them. {That ended after the village agnostic threaten=
ed
to simultaneously distribute a booklet called God Is Just Pretend.) =
There are healing
ministries all throughout Franklin Country, and even mainstream denominat=
ions
have healing teams on hand after Sunday services. As in most places where
evangelism is strong, the locals are fervently pro-Israel. Almost every m=
inister
I visited has mementos in his study from visits to =
Jerusalem. A few had lived in Israel for
extended periods and spoke Hebrew. One delivered a tirade against CNN for=
its
bias against the Jewish state. One or two pointed out (without quite brag=
ging)
that whereas some Jewish groups had canceled trips to Isreal
since the upsurge in intifada violence, evang=
elical
groups were still going.
David Rawley, a United Brethren minister in Greencastle, =
spoke
for many of the social conservatives I met when he said that looking at t=
he
mainstream Hollywood culture made him =
feel
that he was "walking against the current." "The tremendous
force of culture means we can either float or fight" Rawley
said. "Should you drift or stand on a rock? I tell people there is a=
rock
we can hang on-the word of God. That rock will never give way. That rock's
never going to move.' When I asked Rawley wha=
t he
thought of big-city culture, he said, "The individual is swallowed u=
p by
the largeness of the city. I see a world that doesn't want to take
responsibility for itself. They have the babie=
s but
they decide they're not going to be the daddies. rd
really have to cling to the rock if I lived there."
I met with Rawley at the height of the scandal involving
Representative Gary Condit and the missing intern Chandra Levy. Levy's mo=
ther
was quoted in The Washington Times as calling herself a "Heinz 57
mutt" when it came to religion. All religions tie to similar
beliefs," she said. "I believe in spirituality and God. rm Jewish. I think we ha=
ve a
wonderful religion. Fm also Christian. I do believe in Jesus, too." =
The
contrast between her New Age approach to spirituality and Rawley's
Red
America
one could not have been greater.
Life is complicat=
ed,
however. Yes, there are a lot of churches in Franklin County;
there are also a lot of tattoo parlors. And despite all the churches and
bumper stickers, Frankl=
in
County doesn't se=
em
much different from anywhere else. People go to a few local bars to hang =
out
after softball games. Teenagers drive recklessly along fast-food strips.
Young women in halter tops sometimes prowl in the pool halls. The local
college has a gay-and-lesbian group. One conservative clergyman I spoke w=
ith
estimated that 10 percent of his congregants are gay. He believes that ch=
urch
is the place where one should be able to leave the controversy surrounding
this sort of issue behind. Another described how his congregation united
behind a young man who was dying of AIDS.
Sex seems to be on
people's minds almost as much as it is anywhere else. Conservative
evangelical circles have their own sex manuals (rim =
LaHaye
wrote one of them before he moved on to the "Left Behind" serie=
s),
which appear to have had some effect: according to a 1994 study conducted=
by
researchers at the University of Chicago, conservative Protestant women h=
ave
more orgasms than any other group.
Franklin County<=
/st1:PlaceName> is probably a bi=
t more
wholesome than most suburbs in Blue America. (The notion that deviance and
corruption lie underneath the seen-ming confo=
rmism
of suburban middle-class life, popular in Hollywood and in creative-writing
workshops, is largely nonsense.) But it has most of the problems that aff=
lict
other parts of the country: heroin addiction, teen pregnancy, and so on.
Nobody I spoke to felt part of a pristine culture that is exempt from the
problems of the big cities. There are even enough spectacular crimes in <=
st1:place
w:st=3D"on">Franklin County to make a devoted New Yor=
k Post
reader happy. During one of my visits the front pages of the local papers
were ablaze with the tale of a young woman arrested for assault and homic=
ide
after shooting her way through a Veterans of t=
he
Vietnam War post. It was reported that she had intended to rob the post f=
or
money to run away with her lesbian girlfriend.
If the problems a=
re the
same as in the rest of America,
so are many of the solutions. Franklin
County residents =
who
find themselves in trouble go to their clergy first, but they are often
referred to psychologists and therapists as part of their recovery proces=
s.
Prozac is a part of life.
Almost nobody I s=
poke
with understood, let alone embraced, the concept of a culture war. Few co=
uld
see themselves as fighting such a war, in part because few have any idea
where the boundary between the two sides lies. People in Franklin County =
may
have a clear sense of what constitutes good or evil (many people in Blue
America have trouble with the very concept of evil), but they will say th=
at
good and evil are in all neighborhoods, as they are in all of us. People =
take
the Scriptures seriously but have no interest in imposing them on others.=
One
finds little crusader zeal in Franklin
County. For one t=
hing,
people in small towns don't want to offend people whom they'll be
encountering on the street for the next fifty years. Potentially
controversial subjects are often played down. "We would never take a
stance on gun control or abortion," Sue Hadden<=
/span>,
the editor of the Waynesboro=
paper, told me. Whenever I asked what the local view of abortion was, I g=
ot
the same response: "We don't talk about it much," or "We t=
ry
to avoid that subject." Bill Pukmel, the
former Chambersburg newspaper editor, =
says,
"A majority would be opposed to abortion around here, but it wouldn'=
t be
a big majority." It would simply be uncivil to thrust such a raw
disagreement in people's faces.
William Harter, a
Presbyterian minister in Chambersburg,=
spans
the divide between Red and Blue America. Harter was raised on a farm near=
Buffalo. He went=
to the
prestigious Deerfield Academy, in Massachuse=
tts,
before getting a bachelor's degree in history from Williams
College, a master's in educati=
on
from Harvard, and, after serving for a while in the military, a Ph.D. in
Judaism and Christian origins from the Union Theological Seminary, in Manhattan. He h=
as lived
in Chambersburg for the past twenty-four years, and he says that the rang=
e of
opinion in Franklin County is much wider than it was in Cambridge or New
York. "Were more authentically pluralistic
here," he told me.
I found Harter an=
d the
other preachers in Fran=
klin
County especially
interesting to talk with. That was in part because the ones I met were
fiercely intelligent and extremely well read, but also because I could see
them wrestling with the problem of how to live according to the Scriptures
while being inclusive and respectful of others' freedoms. For example, ma=
ny
of them struggle over whether it is right to marry a couple who are alrea=
dy
living together. This would not be a consideration in most of Blue Americ=
a.
"Some of the
evangelicals won't marry [such couples]," Harter told me, "Othe=
rs
will insist that they live apart for six months before they'll marry them.
But that's not the real world. These couples often don't understand the
theological basis for not living together. Even if you don't condone their
situations, you have to start where they are-help them have loyal
marriages."
Divorce is tolera=
ted
much more than it used to be. And none of the ministers I spoke with said
that they would condemn a parishioner who was having an affair. They would
confront the parishioner, but with the goal of gently bringing that person
back to Jesus Christ. "How could I love that person if I didn't?&quo=
t;
Patrick Jones, of the United Brethren's King
Street Church,
in Chambersburg, asked. People in Franklin County are contemptuous of Bill
Clinton and his serial infidelities, but they are not necessarily fans of
Kenneth Starr-at least not the Kenneth Starr the media portrayed. They do=
n't
like public scolds.
Roger Murray, a
Pentecostal minister in Mercersburg, whose father was also a Pentecostal
minister, exemplifies the way in which many church authorities are torn by
the sometimes conflicting desires to uphold authority and respect personal
freedom. "My father would preach about what you could do and what you
couldn't do," Murray
recalls. "He would preach about smoking, about TV, about ladies who
dress provocatively, against divorce" As a boy, Murray used to go visit his uncle, and he would sit in another room when his unc=
le's
family watched television. "I was sure they were going to hell,"=
; he
told me. But now he would never dream of telling people how to live. For =
one
thing, his congregants wouldn't defer. And he is in no rush to condemn
others. "I don't think preaching against homosexuality is what you
should do," he told me. "A positive message works better,"=
Like most of the =
people
I met in Franklin County, Murray
regards such culture warriors as Jerry Falwell and
Pat Robertson as loose cannons, and televangelists as being far too
interested in raising money. "I get pretty disgusted with Christian =
TV,"
he said. And that was before Falwell and Robe=
rtson
made their notorious comments about the attacks of September 11 being a
judgment from God. When I asked locals about those remarks, they answered
with words like "disgusting," "horrendous," and
"horrible:' Almost no one in the county voted for Pat Buchanan; he w=
as
simply too contentious.
Certainly Red and=
Blue
America disagree strongly on some issues, such as homosexuality and abort=
ion.
But for the most part the disagreements are not large. For example, the P=
ew
researchers asked Americans to respond to the statement "There are c=
lear
guidelines about what's good or evil that apply to
everyone regardless of their situation." Forty-three percent of peop=
le
in Blue states and 49 percent of people in Red states agreed. Forty-seven
percent of Blue America and 55 percent of Red America agreed with the
statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage.&qu=
ot;
Seventy percent of the people in Blue states and 77 percent of the people=
in
Red states agreed that "too many children are being raised in day-ca=
re
centers these days.? These are small gaps. And=
, the
Pew researchers found, there is no culture gap at all among suburban vote=
rs.
In a Red state like Arizona suburban v=
oters'
opinions are not much different from those in a Blue state like Connecticut. T=
he
starkest differences that exist are between people in cities and people in
rural areas, especially rural areas in the South.
The conservatism I
found in Franklin
County is not an
ideological or a reactionary conservatism. It is a temperamental
conservatism. People place tremendous value on being agreeable, civil, and
kind. They are happy to sit quietly with one another. They are hesitant to
stir one another's passions. They appreciate what they have. They value
continuity and revere the past. They work hard to reinforce community bon=
ds.
Their newspapers are filled with items about fundraising drives, car wash=
es,
bake sales, penny-collection efforts, and auxiliary thrift shops. Their
streets are lined with lodges: VFW, Rotarians, Elks, =
Moose.
Luncheons go on everywhere. Retired federal employees will be holding the=
ir
weekly luncheon at one restaurant, Harley riders at another. I became
fascinated by a group called the Tuscarora Longbeard=
s,
a local chapter of something called the National Wild Turkey Federation. =
The Longbeards go around to schools distributing Wild A=
bout
Turkey Education boxes, which contain posters, lesson plans, and CD-ROMs =
on
turkey preservation.
These are the sor=
ts of
things that really mobilize people in Franklin County.
Building community and preserving local ways are far more important to th=
em
than any culture war.
THE EGO CURTAIN <=
o:p>
The best explanat=
ion of
the differences between people in Montgomery
and Franklin Counties has to do with sensibil=
ity,
not class or culture. If I had to describe the differences between the two
sensibilities in a single phrase, it would be conception of the self. In =
Red America<=
/b> the self is smal=
l.
People declare in a million ways, "I am normal. Nobody is better, no=
body
is worse. I am humble before God." In Blue America the self is more
commonly large. People say in a million ways, "I am special. I have
carved out my own unique way of life. I am independent. I make up my own
mind."
In Red America<=
/b> there is very li=
ttle
one-upmanship. Nobody tries to be avant-garde in choosing a wardrobe. The
chocolate-brown suits and baggy denim dresses hanging in local department
stores aren't there by accident; people conspicuously want to be seen as =
not
trying to dress to impress.
For a person in B=
lue
America the blandness in Red America can be a little oppressive. But it's hard=
not
to be struck by the enormous social pressure not to put on airs. If a Franklin County resident drove up to chur=
ch one
day in a shiny new Lexus, he would face huge waves of disapproval. If one
hired a nanny, people would wonder who died and made her queen.
In Franklin County
people don't go looking for obscure beers to demonstrate their
connoisseurship. They wear T-shirts and caps with big-brand names on
them-Coke, McDonald's, Chevrolet. In Bethesda
people prefer cognoscenti brands-the Black Dog
restaurant, or the independent bookstore Politics and Prose. In Franklin County
it would be an affront to the egalitarian ethos to put a Princeton
sticker on the rear window of one's car. In Montgomery County=
some proud parents can barely see through their back windows for all the =
Ivy
League stickers. People in Franklin
County say they f=
elt
comfortable voting for Bush, because if he came to town he wouldn't act
superior to anybody else; he could settle into a barber's chair and fit r=
ight
in. They couldn't stand Al Gore, because they thought he'd always be tryi=
ng
to awe everyone with his accomplishments. People in Montgomery County=
tended to admire Gore's accomplishments. They were leery of Bush, because=
for
most of his life he seemed not to have achieved anything.
I sometimes think=
that Franklin County takes its unpretentiousne=
ss a
little too far. I wouldn't care to live there, because I'd find it too
unchanging. I prefer the subtle and not-so-subtle status climbing on my s=
ide
of the Ego Curtain-it's more entertaining. Still, I can't help respecting=
the
genuine modesty of Fran=
klin
County people. It=
shows
up strikingly in data collected by Mediamark
Research. In survey after survey, residents of conservative Red America<=
/b> come across as h=
umbler
than residents of liberal Blue America. About half of those who describe
themselves as "very conservative" agree with the statement &quo=
t;I
have more ability than most people," but nearly two thirds of those =
who
describe themselves as "very liberal" agree. Only 53 percent of
conservatives agree with the statement "I consider myself an
intellectual" but 75 percent of liberals do. Only 23 percent of
conservatives agree with the statement "I must admit that I like to =
show
off," whereas 43 percent of liberals do.
A CAFETERIA NATIO=
N
These differences=
in
sensibility don't in themselves mean that America has become a
fundamentally divided nation. As the sociologist Seymour Martin Upset poi=
nted
out in The First New Nation (1963), achievement and equality are the two
rival themes running throughout American history. Most people, most place=
s,
and most epochs have tried to intertwine them in some way.
Moreover, after
bouncing between Montgomery and Franklin Counties<=
/st1:PlaceName>,
I became convinced that a lot of our fear that America is split into rival=
camps
arises from mistaken notions of how society is shaped. Some of us still c=
arry
the old Marxist categories in our heads. We think that society is like a
layer cake, with the upper class on top. And, like Marx, we tend to assume
that wherever there is class division there is conflict. Or else we have a
sort of Crossfire model in our heads: where would people we meet sit if t=
hey
were guests on that show?
But traveling bac=
k and
forth between the two counties was not like crossing from one rival camp =
to
another. It was like crossing a high school cafeteria. Remember high scho=
ol?
There were nerds, jocks, punks, bikers, techies, druggies, God Squadders, drama geeks, poets, and Dungeons & D=
ragons
weirdoes. All these cliques were part of the same school: they had differ=
ent
sensibilities; sometimes they knew very little about the people in the ot=
her
cliques; but the jocks knew there would always be nerds, and the nerds kn=
ew
there would always be jocks. That's just the way life is.
And that's the wa=
y America<=
/st1:place>
is. We are not a divided nation. We are a cafeteria nation. We form cliqu=
es
(call them communities, or market segments, or whatever), and when they g=
et
too big, we form subcliques. Some people even=
get
together in churches that are "nondenominational" or in politic=
al
groups that are "independent." These are cliques built around t=
he
supposed rejection of cliques.
We live our lives=
by
migrating through the many different cliques associated with the activiti=
es
we enjoy and the goals we have set for ourselves. Our freedom comes in the
interstices; we can choose which set of standards to live by, and when. <=
o:p>
We should remembe=
r that
there is generally some distance between cliques-a buffer zone that separ=
ates
one set of aspirations from another. People who are happy within their
cliques feel no great compulsion to go out and reform other cliques. The
jocks don't try to change the nerds. David Rawley,
the Greencastle minister who felt he was clinging to a rock, has been to =
New York City o=
nly once
in his life. "I was happy to get back home," he told me. "=
It's
a planet Pm a little scared of I have no desire to go back."
What unites the t=
wo Americas=
,
then, is our mutual commitment to this way of life-to the idea that a per=
son
is not bound by his class, or by the religion of his fathers, but is free=
to
build a plurality of connections for himself. =
We are
participants in the same striving process, the same experimental journey.=
Never has this be=
en
more apparent than in the weeks following the September 11 attacks. Before
then Montgomery County people and Franklin County
people gave little thought to one another: an attitude of benign neglect
toward other parts of the country generally prevailed. But the events of =
that
day generated what one of my lunch mates in Franklin County
called a primal response. Our homeland was under attack. Suddenly there w=
as a
positive sense that we Americans are all bound together-a sense that, des=
pite
some little fissures here and there, has endured.
On September 11 p=
eople
in Franklin County flocked to the institutio=
ns
that are so strong there-the churches and the American Legion and the VFW
posts. Houses of worship held spontaneous prayer services and large
ecumenical services. In the weeks since, firemen, veterans, and Scouts ha=
ve
held rallies. There have been blood drives. Just about every service
organization in the county-and there are apparently thousands-has mobiliz=
ed
to raise funds or ship teddy bears. The rescue squad and the Salvation Ar=
my
branch went to New York
to help.
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Early every morni=
ng Ted
Hale, the Presbyterian minister who once worked in East Hampton, goes to =
one
of the local restaurants and sits as the regulars cycle through. One of t=
he
things that has struck him since the attacks i=
s how
little partisan feeling is left. "I expected to hear a certain amoun=
t of
Clinton
bashing, for creating the mess in which this could take place," he t=
old
me in October. "But there's been absolutely none of that" Inste=
ad
Hale has been deluged with questions-about Islam, about why God restrains
himself in the face of evil, about how people could commit such acts.
The area's church=
es
have not been monolithic in their responses. Many of the most conservative
churches-the Mennonites and the Brethren, for example-have pacifist
traditions. Bill Harter, in contrast, told his congregation during a rece=
nt
sermon that the pacifist course is not the right one. "We must face =
the
fact that there is a power of evil loose in the universe, which is dedica=
ted
to attacking all that is good, all that comes from God," he said. Th=
is
evil, Harter continued, has cloaked itself in a perverted form of one of =
the
world's major faiths. Citing the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, =
he
reminded his congregants that there is no sinless way to defend ourselves
against this hostile ideology. But defend we must. "We must humbly m=
ake
our choice while recognizing that we must constantly turn to God for
forgiveness," he told them.
The churches and
synagogues in Bethesda,
too, have been struggling. Over the Jewish High Holy Days, I heard of thr=
ee
synagogues in which the sermon was interrupted by a member of the
congregation. In one instance the rabbi had said that it is always imposs=
ible
to know where good and evil lie. A man rose up angrily to declare that in
this case that sentiment was nonsense.
Most people in my=
part
of Blue America know few who will be called on to fight in the war. In Franklin County military service is commo=
n.
Many families have an enlisted son or daughter, and many more have a rela=
tive
in the reserves or the National Guard. Franklin County is engaged in an
urgent discussion, largely absent where I live, about how to fill in for =
the
reservists called up for active duty.
Still there's an
attitude of determination in both places. If I had to boil down all the
conversations I have had in Franklin and=
Montgomery Counties since September 11, the
essence would be this: A horrible thing happened. We're going to deal with
it. We're going to restore order. We got through P=
earl
Harbor. We're going to get through this. "There is no
flaccidity," Harter observed, in words that apply to both communitie=
s.
If the September =
11
attacks rallied people in both Red and Blue America, they also neutralize=
d the
political and cultural leaders who tend to exploit the differences between
the two. Americans are in no mood for a class struggle or a culture war. =
The
aftermath of the attacks has been a bit like a national Sabbath, taking us
out of our usual pleasures and distractions and reminding us what is real=
ly
important. Over time the shock will dissipate. But in important ways the
psychological effects will linger, just as the effects of John E Kennedy's
assassination have lingered. The early evidence still holds: although the=
re
are some real differences between Red and Blue America, there is no
fundamental conflict. There may be cracks, but there is no chasm. Rather,
there is a common love for this nation-one nation in the end. =
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