How the American Experiment Can End
Ask any American their confidence in the fate of our great nation given the high levels of division and polarization, and you are likely to hear less than stellar responses. With debates still raging over the accuracy of the 2020 elections, a public mired in silos of racial, political, and even national identity, the growing cultural norm of cancel culture (ahem, on both sides), it is a wonder that we are able to still speak to one another. And just to drive home the point even further, do we agree what being woke even means?
No matter the day or hour, there is seemingly no relief from the exhaustion of our national crackup. Even without the chaos over who is the rightful president, the culture debates turned outright wars, muted expressions of loathing and hate, and political posturing and bloviating from both the left and right have some of our most talented political thinkers skeptical about whether it is even possible to come up with a national narrative when 50% of the country has a completely different story than those who make up the other half.
For nearly 250 years, America has served as a test case for a social experiment that few could have ever conceived of. When one considers the Jamestown massacre of 1622; the Trail of Tears of 1838, a history of slavery, civil war, and emancipation; and, the battles waged over voting rights and suffrage, one can easily find reason to be doubtful of our nation’s historical inevitability or destiny. The more deeply and comprehensively one studies America’s past, the easier it is to imagine that success is far from certain.
In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, it is easy to see America not as a certainty but as something tentative and fragile. As the “experiment” that it is. The proof of this fragility is all around us. Given current levels of political polarization, an ever-increasing economic and class divide, or the whispers turned headlines of a looming civil war, it can seem naïve, silly even, to think of America as a “done deal”.
The more deeply and comprehensively one studies America’s past, the easier it is to imagine that success is far from certain.
In a 2019 Asia Times article, author Scott Shay wrote, “Never before in my life have I been so worried about America. The future of the Great American Experiment, a guiding light for so many inhabitants of this planet, is today uncertain. A more violent and divided America is a near reality if we stay on our present course. Our democracy is crumbling, and Americans across the divide no longer understand the conceptual foundations necessary to preserve it.” He went on to write that “Today, we risk destroying the Great American Experiment because we have forgotten how to engage with people with whom we disagree.”
Remarkably, demonization of the other side has not only become more common, it is quickly becoming the status quo. And a growing number of Americans are jumping on board. In a paper titled “Lethal Mass Partisanship,” based on surveys taken in 2017 and 2018, Professors Nathan Kalmoe and Liliana Mason report that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans believed that members of the other party were a serious threat to the US. More than 40% of each party thought that the other party was not just politically worse, but that they were downright evil. Additionally, 16% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats thought the US would be better off if large numbers of the other party just died. With these and more recent polls that highlight even more extreme outcomes, I would argue that the situation we find ourselves is now at a tipping point.
But the American experiment does not have to tip in the direction of utter failure. That is unless we let it.
If you look closely enough — well beyond the noise of the mainstream media editorials and the throng of social media Twitter beefs — you find a resilient American strain. A strain that might just have the power to save us from this moment of insanity. It is because of this history that I believe the death of the American experiment is not a foregone conclusion. It’s not even on life support - yet.
America’s strength has long rested not just in its codification of fundamental beliefs and principles, but in its foundational ideals of liberty, equality, and opportunity. While this is the backbone of the American experiment thus far, I wish to add a hidden but, I believe, more powerful reason for the strength of the American idea and ideal: that within the chaos and confusion of these past two and a half years (or even two and a half centuries) is a nation’s commitment to seek after a more perfect union, and a commitment to the pursuit of a common good – at home and around the world.
There are plenty of examples of this commitment. In his 2019 op-ed, titled “The American experiment is not dead”, author Timothy Egan wrote:
“For starters, despite a presidential policy sourced from the sewers of white supremacy, a nation of immigrants has not turned against immigrants. The consensus, though battered, is intact: About 60% of Americans say openness to outsiders is essential to our identity. The majority say immigrants strengthen the country.
Twice before, this animating idea has been under deadly assault. In the 1850s, as waves of ravaged Irish refugees washed up on our shores, the Know-Nothing Party rose to keep them from becoming citizens. The huddled masses were too dirty, too criminal, too foreign, too loud, too clannish, too Catholic. Lincoln despised the Know-Nothings; his rise helped lead to their demise.”
Throughout history, national support for the words from Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, New Colossus, now memorialized into the base of the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, has been – at different times and for different reasons - under assault. For example, as waves of ravaged Irish refugees washed up on our shores in the 1950s, my own grandmother included, the Know-Nothing Party sought to gain enough power to keep them from becoming citizens. These huddled masses from parts unknown were “too dirty, too foreign, too Catholic to be considered American. Lincoln’s rise, and his fervent efforts to upend the Know-Nothing Party, would eventually lead to the party’s demise.”[1]
We were tested again the early 20th century, a time when millions of Americans not only supported but took oaths to the Ku Klux Klan. So powerful was the KKK movement, they held considerable power in government, industry, and society at large. Black voting was largely absent in most Southern states, and the passing of hundreds of “Jim Crow” laws occurred in even some of the Northern states.
Today, with the percentage of foreign-born residents at the highest level in more than 100 years, we are all trying to live by Lazarus’ creed — despite our basest nature to “go tribal”.
As Egan went on to remind us, today we have no external enemy to unite us. Removed into the farthest annals of history lie the stories of our fight against the British Crown, a war with Nazi Germany, the destruction of a Cold War wall. The enemy to the success of this, the American experiment, no longer lies without. We’ve ripped back the veil and exposed our new enemy. And it lies within.
The American experiment does not have to tip in the direction of utter failure. That is unless we let it.
Also in 2019, a stratified random sample of 523 registered voters, were selected out of millions of Americans – through a rigorous scientific process to represent the political, cultural, and demographic diversity of the American electorate – to participate in one of the most significant political experiments in U.S. history. Led by the Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, “America in One Room”, these 523 Americans participated in an unprecedented deliberation on the critical issues facing the United States.
In a process called “deliberative democracy polling”, the 523 participants began by taking an in-depth questionnaire, stating their views on five key issue areas identified in earlier polling as most vital to the 2020 presidential election. The outcome was a landmark data set that represented the “will of the people” — what Americans think about values, candidates, and policy issues when given the chance to think deeply, engage with different opinions, and deliberate in a fact-rich and respectful environment.
The point of the experiment was to address the lack of public awareness around key issues prior to voting. In this experiment, participants were provided with “carefully balanced briefing materials,” followed by opportunities for informed and deliberative discussions with experts and candidates, as well as moderated dialogues with other participants. Researchers then measured the changes in participants’ opinions and voting positions on the same issues after being given the opportunity to be more informed on the issues.
The four-day event, designed to promote dialogue between people of different political viewpoints, included topics such as health care, immigration, the economy, the environment, and foreign policy. At the end of the four days, researchers identified a noticeable shift by the participants. For example, support for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act dropped from 35 to 25 percent over the course of the weekend, a drop that could be attributed to a vast decrease in support from Republican participants.[2]
Today we have no external enemy to unite us. Removed into the farthest annals of history lie the stories of our fight against the British Crown, a war with Nazi Germany, the destruction of a Cold War wall. The enemy to the success of this, the American experiment, no longer lies without. We’ve ripped back the veil and exposed our new enemy. And it lies within.
Recently, data from a follow-up study, conducted a year after the original event, was released. And the results confirm that the event’s impacts are still being felt by participants.
If we are ever to heal existing divides, this event and hundreds of others like it happening around the country today offer us a glimmer of hope: that when we reach across the aisle, to those who think or believe differently than we do and dare to engage in conversation and dialogue with those with whom we disagree, we soften our positions – on issues, and on people themselves. This has certainly been confirmed in the Dialogue Labs we have facilitated over the past 6 months. What we are finding is that when people are willing to be vulnerable, to open themselves up to ideas and opinions that challenge their own, they not only don’t resent it, they enjoy it. And more often than not, they want to keep talking.
Across hundreds of conversations just this year with pastors, leaders, and average Americans, I have been given more than my fair share of reasons to hope for a positive outcome to this social, political, and spiritual experiment that we call America. And I believe this same outcome is possible for the rest of the nation.
In a time when the political decisions of millions of Americans are informed by commentary found in dark web chat rooms, social media platforms, and disinformation sites, the tech-free tool of dialogue offers up a surprisingly time-tested model for discussing politics in the U.S. And every other topic that so easily divides us. May we all begin to take our first steps to bridge divides, with hope and expectation of a more perfect union and a successful conclusion to the centuries-old experiment called America.
[1] Egan, Timothy. The American experiment is not dead. Opinion. Seattle Times, Dec. 6, 2019.
[2] Haug, Oliver. “A Year-Long Experiment Attempted to See if Americans Can Agree on Politics.” Ms. Magazine, November 5, 2020. https://msmagazine.com/2020/11/05/america-in-one-room-a-year-later/
