The United States is exceptional in that it is, more than any other nation I can think of, a construction, an artifice created by a group of men. Not over time as may be the case with any other nation, but in a few years by a concerted effort of certain more or less like minded individuals with relatively similar interests and desires. The fundamental structure of that nation was borrowed from others in certain respects (the Roman Republic seems to have been an inspiration), but the form of its government was new, and committed to writing.
It may be such a creation can't stand the test of time. It nearly fell apart, after all, in part because it was understood by those interested in its dissolution to be a human creation rather than the slow work of years in which custom was molded and people with it to form a distinct identity. As a human creation voluntarily joined in by the former colonies, the Union could be dissolved. Or so thought the Confederates.
I think that this perspective may arise once more. But if the nation does dissolve it may be due, in a perverse way, to a desire for a sameness which no longer exists. A desire for a sameness of a certain kind, which those who prefer it wish to impose, by exclusion and intolerance.
The sameness sought would seem to be a kind of construction itself, the result of a selection of certain characteristics or traits it's thought once abided throughout the land, and may have obtained in portions of it in the past. Now it seems a sameness which has taken on the quality of myth. We all watched too many TV series glorifying that 19th century migrant worker known as the cowboy, perhaps. Or, perhaps we watched too many of the sitcoms popular in the 1950s. Many of us have a kind of nostalgia for life as it was lived during the Eisenhower administration. We pride ourselves in being stout individualists, but the individuals we think we are or wish to be are homogenous.
The so-called Melting Pot America was once said to be may never have existed, in fact. Even the Irish, Chinese, Italians, Greeks, and various Eastern Europeans have not been accepted fully, and are always suspect in one way or another here in God's favorite country.
Regardless, what we see taking place is an association of groups or tribes. Like calls to like; like seeks like in times of stress or trouble. Like fears and hates unlike in those times.
As a result, there is a reaction against multiculturalism and diversity taking place here, and also in Europe. One can sympathize with the desire of a group of people to maintain their own customs and culture and to maintain their own institutions. One can understand that this desire may result in the resentment of immigrants who seek to maintain their own culture and customs although they leave their own countries to live in others for various reasons. There is an argument to be made that immigrants should not expect the country they seek to be the country they left, and that they should act accordingly.
But there are too many of us on this planet already, and the simple fact is that the population of this nation and others will change, is changing. That change can't be stopped for more than a short time. We can't be what we were, and certainly can't be what it seems our current president and his supporters want us to be. So, it may be we'll no longer want to be one out of many. But that will mean merely that we won't be one nation, and will be a fragmented one instead, if we are any kind of nation at all.
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