We're entering the final phase of this interminable campaign. It's very likely that Obama will win, but regardless of who becomes President, the country is more than ever - profoundly divided.
Is that something we should be worrying about?
Yes it is.
In other countries, like the UK for example, cultural differences are a matter of degrees along a wide spectrum. There simply isn't an equivalent of the vast chasm between "Real America" and the rest of America that we have in the US. In this country, entrenched cultural, religious and political beliefs have done more to fundamentally stall the future of this country than virtually any other single phenomenon. We like to lambast the "Guns and God" crowd, and when it comes to their outlook on politics at least - we're right to. They are malleable, manipulable, gullible and willfully ignorant in many respects, and their leaders have tapped into that to create a power base that has been incredibly destructive to this nation's future.
Unless something highly unlikely occurs this election will be the first to reverse the power grip that the Conservative movement has exercised since Nixon first invoked the "Silent Majority". Starting with Goldwater, the Conservatives have tried and succeeded to apply a legitimate intellectual veneer to their goading of the "low information" voter to support a monochromatic outlook that had very little to do with their interests, and an awful lot to do with their beliefs. It has been a peculiarly time honored American process, replete with rabble-rousing, hyperbolic ruralism, and fetishistic adherences to cultural and religious shibboleths. At election time, the "tax and spend" canards are trotted out - and they work.
Failed, incomplete, and flawed government programs, an absurd fiscal system, and rampant deregulatory zeal in the cause of an uneven and thoughtless free market ideology has left this country almost shattered. Its trust in government is at an all time low. But even if Obama wins, and wins big, and even if the Democrats get a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate - can this nation's downward spiral be stopped and reversed?
The answer is probably not. Or at least not until it's too late.
America's core problems go far deeper than political decision-making. The real roadblock is culture. "Real America" is resistant to progress. And they are not going to change. The idea that one of the most ideologically bankrupt Republican campaigns in memory is within five points of one of the most capable and moderate Democrats of our time is astonishing. But it isn't surprising. There really are that many people in this country who are ambivalent towards, or distrust and often hate progress. The idea of changing the fundamentals of American life is just anathema to them. They want to keep this nation the way it is.
The problem is that if we keep going down the track we're on, the era of American hegemony is over, and with it will go American prosperity. We're headed for Third World status in so many different ways, domestically and internationally, it's painful to list them. We're a debtor nation with rampant wealth inequality and a distant and unrepresentative political system, riddled with special interests. Our citizens are poorly educated, unhealthy, unprotected, susceptible to propaganda, and oddly deferential. Finally, we have a powerless liberal elite, and vast amounts of poorly directed talent and innovation.
It's almost as if Third World status is a desired outcome for "Real America", as long as the nation remains true to its "values". Money, power, waste, and the false, rhetorical obsessions with 'freedom' and 'liberty' are leading to the nation's ruin. But to the blinkered mass in "Real America"collapse is unthinkable, even if its staring them in the face. And they have the inertia to put the nation at risk. As long as they can be this close to winning - at a time like this, they will have the support of a political apparatus that feels its interests are best served by obstructionism in the name of "restoring the American Dream".
But just like the man says, there is hope. Modernity is coming to America in the shape of fundamental demographic change, combined with technology. We know that many of the mistakes of America's history have to be undone if it's going to survive as a world power. But if the destruction of the last eight years is any indication, the nation may well be too weakened in the next decade or so to fulfill the hopes of the next generation and beyond.
Obama and sixty senators are the best chance we have, but we need to be realistic about the problems that face this country. They are likely to be too deep even for them.