The Divided States of America
Where we treat disagreement like treason
VOICE & VISION | The Divided States of America, Part 2
By TLS
“…one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Good words, maybe the best we ever had. Too bad they didn’t last.
If you haven’t already, catch up with part 1, Two Nations: One Land.
The United States doesn’t feel very united anymore. It feels like two countries forced to share the same land but unwilling to share the same truth. One side wraps authoritarianism in the flag and calls it patriotism. The other Twitter mob attacks any disagreement, all in the name of progress. Both are certain they’re saving America, but neither seems interested in understanding the other.
What happened? When did disagreement become a blood sport?
Somewhere along the way, politics stopped being about policy and started being about identity. The idea of persuasion vanished, replaced by performance. The louder you shout, the more righteous you must be. The more cruel your opponent, the more justified your anger. The algorithm rewards outrage, and outrage has become the national language.
Social media didn’t create division, but it gave it a megaphone. Every tweet, post, or comment is a chance to declare loyalty to a tribe. Facts matter less than feelings, and nuance dies in the comments section. “Us versus Them” sells, and a few powerful people, some in politics, some in tech, some with deep pockets, learned how to weaponize that. They pour gasoline on the house fire then sell us the house, as I wrote in: Is Your House On Fire?
And we keep buying it, because outrage feels good. It gives us purpose, belonging, and someone to blame. It’s easier to shout at a caricature than talk to a neighbor. It’s easier to repost something angry than to read something complex. And the longer we do that, the more we forget what we’re actually fighting for.
We say we love freedom, but we treat disagreement like treason. We say we believe in democracy, but only if our side wins. We talk about “the people” as if we aren’t part of them. Every argument feels like a final battle, every election, the apocalypse.
This isn’t sustainable. You can’t run a country on contempt. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you hate half your nation. And you can’t fix a system you’ve already decided to destroy.
I don’t think most Americans actually want this fight. I think most of us are tired, tired of being manipulated, tired of the noise, tired of watching good words lose their meaning. The extremists, Left and Right, scream loudest, but they don’t speak for everyone. The rest of us just stopped talking because shouting feels pointless.
But silence isn’t helping either. If the moderate, reasonable, quietly decent people don’t start speaking again, and listening again, we’ll lose the ground completely. “Indivisible” wasn’t just a poetic word in a pledge. It was the idea that despite all our differences, we’d still hold together when it mattered.
Maybe those words still matter. Maybe they always did. But until we start believing in “indivisible” again, “liberty and justice for all” will stay a slogan from a country we used to be.
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Cintinue the series with part 3: Fear vs Trust: The Real Fight.
