Welcome to the United States of America in the 2020s. In Tennessee, two Democratice state lawmakers were expelled by their Republican legislative colleagues for protesting gun violence in a legislative chamber. They did so in response to another mass killing of school children and educators in that state. In Wisconsin, the defeated conservative candidate for the state’s Supreme Court turned his concession speech into a virulent and vitriolic attack on the liberal woman who defeated him. Speculation now swirls that Badger State Republicans will use their supermajority in the State Senate (thanks to gerrymandered voting districts) to impeach the newest member of the high court because she is a liberal and supports abortion rights for women. Several Republican Congressional representatives in Congress have publicly called for a national ‘divorce’ or separation between conservative and liberal parts of the country, a sentiment espoused with increasing frequency by right-wing pundits in the media echo chamber of the hard-right.

At the heart of these kerfuffles is the new American culture war, a fight for what American’s increasingly see as the battle for the nation’s soul. The front lines of that apocalyptic battle are conflicts over guns, abortion, sexual expression, the definition of marriage, and fears of government over reach. Underlying this culture war are longstanding , often sub-rosa, American disputes over racial and ethnic and religious nationalism and diversity (The two Tennessee lawmakers expelled were Black while a third White legislator escaped this fate).

The hardening battle lines crop up in odd ways. Alabama U.S. Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach, has used his key Congressional committee position to single handedly stop promotions in the U.S. military. Pentagon officials increasingly decry the threat to our military preparedness and security at a time when international turmoil with Russia, China, and North Korea are on the rise. Tuberville’s issue? The military issued rules ensuring that female members would have access to abortion services.

Nothing strikes the citizens of civilized nations around the globe as more absurd than America’s willingness to sacrifice school children in the slavish worship of guns … particularly military-style automatic weapons that have no role in deer hunting or personal defense, unless you plan on protecting your house from a Russian invasion. This is an odd issue on which to defend one’s right to forfeit their final attachment to sanity. There have been 377 school shootings in the U.S. since 1999. Some 623 children, often young victims, have been killed or seriously injured. It has been estimated that almost 350,000 school children have been directly exposed to gun violence during school hours while millions have been exposed to the anxieties associated the loss of security in their classrooms.

In my day as a young student (the 1950s), we did have our worries. I recall fearing polio a great deal, which was eradicated by a vaccine that many of today’s Republicans would likely oppose as government over reach. I also feared that the Russkies would drop the ‘big one’ on our school, but was comforted by the notion that my demise would be quick. And, of course, I worried I would fail my exams. I still have nightmares that I am approaching exams after not having attended any classes. But I never, not in my wildest and most improbably dreams, ever conceived that a disgruntled student or deranged adult would walk into my classoom with an AR-15 weapon (or the equivalent from that era) and gun me and my classmates down.

During one period of time in the 21st century, an international comparison of school mass shootings was done. There were 288 such events in the States during the period of the study. In the nation ranked just below us, Mexico, there were 8. The slaughter of our school children (in a place that should be safe for them) is a clear example of American exceptionalism and certainly our national insanity. And don’t get me started on the 2nd Amendment … I’m still looking for that well-regulated militia which bears no relation to permitting every wing-nut access to military hardware.

If we were a rational nation, we would be focusing on different issues … things like the threat to jobs and the economy posed by the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies or the threat to the species emanating from anthropogenic climate change. But no, the front lines of our ideological battle fields are disputes over things like guns, abortion, gays rights and, as always, diversity. These are the touchstones that define us as a culture and who we are as a people. Many, not a majority, see America as white, as Christian, and as rooted in what they perceive as traditional values like personal freedom and independence. Notions like collaboration and consensus, the principles of democratic rule, are conflated with socialism and moral decay in their minds … i.e., with those who identify themselves as Democrats In the end, this portion of America yearns for a strong man to right all that is seen as wrong about us. They yearn for a return of the nation to ancient verities that never existed.

Is this sense of internal conflict unique in America? Not really, few things are seldom new. By the 1850s, the broiling diputes over slavery were reaching a crescendo. And let us not be confused, ‘slavery’ was a front-burner issue that stood for deeper cultural divides. The northern part of the nation sought to sustain democratic principles (as badly as they were conceived in that era), to encourage some social mobility and improvement, welcomed education and new ideas or innovation. The Republican Party emerged in Wisconsin in the mid-1850s precisely to pursue this vision of America. Abraham Lincoln risked everything, and sacrificed 600,000 lives to force two distinct cultures back together in the pursuit of unifying norms and a political dream where all might have at least a chance to be what they could be.

But the run up to war was a period of geographcal hate and suspicion, violence in our legislatures, and a breakdown in normal discourse. recall that one U.S, Senator from the South attacked and almost killed another member for speaking out against slavery. We are close to such levels of acrimony today. Then, it was mostly north versus south. Today, it is largely urban versus rural.

But here is the question that nags me, and has for some time. Our Civil War, our national bloodletting, succeeded in forcing two opposing cultures back together within a single political body. But did the marriage work?

I am doubftul. It strikes me that the simmering conflict in America would merely was suppressed while de jure apartheid permitted pernicious practices of exclusion and exploitation to continue in many parts of the country. The ‘rights’ movement of the 1960s rectified old wrings nut opened the old scars over time.

Frankly, I’m not sure. I have doubts we can stay together as one country and remain an effective political body. The divide simply is too deep. Lincoln himself saw the weakness of his own herculean efforts to bind us together … “a divided house cannot stand.” On the other hand, I have no idea how to effectute a civil divorce.