By JOHN BRODERICK
?Had enough? Aren’t you just emotionally exhausted? Maybe we really have unwittingly become two countries: Red and Blue. How much longer can we just pretend things will get better and return to “normal”? America is reeling and we need to deal with it if we still can.
Trump is seen as a messiah in the Red states and a would-be dictator in the Blue ones. Democracy’s foundations are eroding rapidly from a Blue-state perspective while Red states don’t seem concerned. In fact, the Red states seem OK with troops on our streets while the Blue states are outraged. The Red states are cheering the never-before-seen conduct of Trump’s masked force of ICE agents who pluck people off our streets never to be seen again while Blue states are appalled and wonder whatever happened to due process and the Rule of Law.
The Red states applaud the “Big Beautiful Bill” that gave the top 1% of Americans the largest tax break in history and a huge tax cut for corporations while cutting funds for food stamps, the WIC funds for mothers, infants and children, drastic reductions in Medicaid benefits, and the doubling (or worse) of health care costs for the 22 million people who use the Obama Care exchanges. The Blue states see what’s happening as a huge wealth transfer to the already rich while the middle class is being downsized and the poor and working poor are being abandoned. The Blue states see an oligarchy growing in America at the expense of most of us. The Red states are apparently OK with it.
The Red states are fine with the loss of a woman’s right to choose while Blue states see it as turning away from long-established Constitutional rights that will now jeopardize a woman’s health and reproductive freedom. Apparently needless maternal deaths are not a concern in Red states while that reality is viewed with moral outrage in Blue states.
The Red states want to roll back civil rights and voting rights and believe that women and minorities only advance in the workplace through the “evils” of diversity, equity and inclusion. Blue states favor moving forward with enfranchising voters and believe in the strength of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural democracy with real opportunity for all of us.
The Red states believe vaccines are killing and harming us and are being pushed by some huge Big Pharma conspiracy while Blue states embrace science and the incredible positive impact it has made in our health, the health of our children and our life expectancies.
The Red states believe in virtually unlimited gun rights and that all we can do is pray after mass killings while Blue states believe we can both respect the Second Amendment and make sensible changes like expanded background checks, bans on assault weapons, and red flag laws so that prayers are not our only answer for grieving families.
Red states apparently think government can tell us what we can read and not read and that government book bans and book burnings are OK while Blue states believe in First Amendment freedoms and that they can make their own decisions for themselves and their families without government intrusion.
Nothing on the horizon would suggest our cultural and political differences can be bridged. They only seem to be growing wider. Red and Blue states clearly don’t trust each other and it seems that harangue has substituted for finding principled compromise. But with such gross and stark differences between Red states and Blue ones maybe compromise is just a pipe dream. Elections, the salve that always saved us, no longer seem sufficient.
Maybe we really have become two different countries with different values and different visions. It sure feels that way most days. But leaving it to chance can’t be the answer. We better address our growing differences or, sadly, find a way to divide our nation in two before the growing turmoil, distrust and chaos consume us. Two nations, under God, may be the only way forward. Let’s hope not. But the time for deliberative decision-making is running out. America as we remember it is genuinely at risk of failing. That should frighten all of us into action.
John T. Broderick Jr. is the former dean of UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law and the founder of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Policy.