Today, under George W. Bush, there are two Americas, not one: One America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. - Former Senator John Edwards during the 2004 Democratic primary
On December 28, 2006, while standing in front of a boarded up home in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans and surrounded by huddled masses of Katrina survivors, John Edwards announced his presidential bid. He chose that locale, he said, because it best illustrated the "two Americas" he had spoken about since 2004. The message was simple and delivered with heartfelt and palpable anger: one America works hard but still struggles while another works little and lives a lavish lifestyle.
This theme of "two Americas" and the twin idea of social injustice permeated almost every aspect of his campaign. Yet, back in 2006 and 2007, his message was met with skepticism in the traditional media. High-paid members of the chattering class shook their heads at his “angry” rhetoric and questioned whether the tone of his message was turning off voters.
Indeed, for many Americans, while they agreed with the principle idea of a divided America, they did so only in abstract sense. While one could sympathize with the 47 million uninsured, the families living paycheck to paycheck, and the senior citizens choosing between food and medicine, many could not empathize with these situations. Poverty, or even the possibility of poverty, was not a daily worry for most Americans.
Sure, in 2005, America was jostled into at least acknowledging the existence of this hidden America when Hurricane Katrina hit. The storm's waters glistened like a reflecting pool and showed Americans the one facet of our nation that was up until that point hidden in the shadows of national shame.
As we watched residents of the Ninth Ward signal for help on their rooftops, as we saw families cling to car doors as they swam through residential streets, and as the horrific realization dawned on us that, for many Americans, there is simply no place to go, we caught a glimpse of that other America that few middle class Americans and fewer politicians dare to acknowledge. In that moment, we were finally confronted—whether we wanted to see it or not—with the aspects of this nation that do not and should not reflect the America we aspire to become.
That America was so shockingly different than the America most of us acknowledge on a daily basis that many could only tolerate a fleeting glimpse of the monstrosity of that forgotten society. Disgusting as it may be, a glimpse was all apparently that we as a nation could bear. Soon, our eye turned away from the Ninth Ward and that epitome of "two Americas.” The "angry" populist rhetoric quickly faded away and outrage and horrified sadness were replaced with the numb memory that something--far away, adrift in time--is deeply wrong in America.
Life, like water, trickles on and we continued with our middle class existence. Nestled between the impoverished and the imperial lifestyles, citizens of this third America soldiered on. We suspended our disbelief regarding our precarious citizenship in a shrinking middle class and instead reveled in our commercialized cocoon-like existence. In this muffled world swaddled by Netflix movie queues, Chinese takeout boxes, and Best Buy gift cards, the cries of the unemployed and suffering were but a distant blip.
We were fine.
Sure, things could be better. But in this third America, we foolishly still believed life in modern America was about moving up rather than desperately preventing oneself from slipping down. We were oblivious (perhaps consciously so) to the underlying instability of our middle class existence, and we were just fine.
In this sense, there was, until this recent populist awakening, three Americas. Not necessarily between poor America, rich America, and middle class America, but between those who lived reality, those who didn't care about it, and those who were simply oblivious to it.
That is until the recession didn't give most Americans a choice to be "simply oblivious" to it any longer.
Wave after wave of layoffs now lap loudly at our office door. Paychecks seem shrunken as a stormy economic reality pounds against the hard rocks of this recession. With a deep sigh we realize that this is what it's like living in -- and finally acknowledging – a bifurcated America.
No longer do we cloak ourselves in that childish belief that we are leaders of our coffee-cup world, or that if we do X then Y we would reap a predictable and positive result. The gut-wrenching truth has been shoved in our faces – we are but minor flecks of humanity on a gargantuan stage, where the power players are not human creatures but faceless corporations.
As story after story comes out of middle class families now living on the street and of small business owners now working hourly jobs, we awaken to the fact that all that prevents us from slipping down into the hell of true poverty is a paycheck—and our employer’s will to continue writing it.
This awakening and sudden understanding of one's status in society can best be explained by turning to another John Edwards -- Jonathan Edwards, that is, the preacher of that infamous 1741 sermon, Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.
In that sermon, which was a key text of the Great Awakening, Edwards painted God not as a benevolent supreme being, but as a force to be feared who could destroy you at any instant for any reason:
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire . . . And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. . . . [T]he reason why they are not fallen already and do not fall now is only that God's appointed time is not come. For it is said, that when that due time, or appointed time comes, their foot shall slide. Then they shall be left to fall, as they are inclined by their own weight. God will not hold them up in these slippery places any longer, but will let them go; and then, at that very instant, they shall fall into destruction; as he that stands on such slippery declining ground, on the edge of a pit, he cannot stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost.
Much like Jonathan Edwards’ image of the precarious position of Christians served to wake up congregations, so has our awareness of our precarious position as members of America’s dwindling middle class been heightened by the recent economic turmoil.
Our awakening is now, as we look up and see the hands of these corporate giants who fancied themselves gods. These few mega-corporations who refused to play by the rules hold us over the pit of poverty, abhorring us, looking at us as not worthy of anything but to be cast into the pile of the unemployed.
Now we feel the full force of John Edwards’s two Americas. It is characterized by a soul-crushing sense that no matter how hard you work or how well you work, whether you rise or fall is not necessarily dictated by your merits, but by the line items in your employer’s budget. This leads to an infuriating sense of helplessness, for in this America, recession America, wrong America, our fate is governed not by our actions or by the rugged individualism that breathes life into our national culture. Our fate is in the hands of the arbitrary will of those above us. And while that has perhaps always been the case, the fall below us has never seemed so far down, and the journey there has never seemed so dark.
As we dangle from delicate threads of hope that today we won’t be laid off or that this month, the bills won't be too high, we see below us those who have already become victims of this economic storm. They’re in the red, swept away by currents of change that they cannot control, clinging to 401(k)s to stay afloat and clamoring through life savings to keep their heads above water.
In this turmoil, in this wake of chaos, we hold on to those threads of hope. We lay our fate at the mercy of our employers and extend our hands to all Americans, on either side of the American divide. As our nation rides this storm, we find strength in numbers and in the poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe again.
We look to our leaders to navigate these troubled waters, and we hold our collective breath for that moment when we can exhale and welcome the dawn of one America, set right on her course and stronger than ever, ready and able to weather whatever storm comes her way again.