There is no such thing as the united States.
As an era of medical mask mandates draws to a close and we begin to ponder lessons learned, that one should top the list. Not to overstate the case.
To our credit, we are a nation that has always united in times of national crisis. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, when the Russians launched Sputnik, when John Kennedy was murdered, when terrorists flew planes into skyscrapers, we ceased, albeit briefly, to be red or blue or black or white. We were Americans and as such, we mourned together, sacrificed together, strove together, met the challenge together.
Yet, this is also true: absent history putting a metaphorical gun to our heads, we’ve always been a fractious people, a bunch of competing interests – South versus North, farm versus city, hippies versus hardhats – masquerading as a nation. To repurpose an infamous quote by Booker T. Washington, Americans can be “as separate as the fingers,” on a daily basis, “yet as one as the hand” when their country is imperiled.
Except that now, we are not even that. No, we are a nation that managed to politicize medicine, that made science a liberal conspiracy. We are people who literally couldn’t come together to save their own lives.