"Free America, Smart America, Real America, and Just (as in justice) America"

The four "Americas" as recently described by George Packer. So who's George Packer? Here's a "breadcrumb" :

quote George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, and The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq.

"How America Fractured Into Four Parts"

quote People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?

George Packer for The Atlantic; July/August 2021.
https://www.theatlantic.com...our-americas/619012/

When I saw this Pennock's forum topic, I saw an opening for an article that I've been "stockpiling" for several months, waiting for an opportune moment to promote it.

It's an essay of size and substance, and has that literary sheen that marks it (IMO) as a viable candidate for many a Suggested Reading List in classrooms, on campus or online, across the broad expanse of Academic America.

EXCERPT

quote The 1970s ended postwar, bipartisan, middle-class America, and with it the two relatively stable narratives of getting ahead and the fair shake. In their place, four rival narratives have emerged, four accounts of America’s moral identity. They have roots in history, but they are shaped by new ways of thinking and living. They reflect schisms on both sides of the divide that has made us two countries, extending and deepening the lines of fracture. Over the past four decades, the four narratives have taken turns exercising influence. They overlap, morph into one another, attract and repel one another. None can be understood apart from the others, because all four emerge from the same whole.

HOW IT ENDS

quote It’s common these days to hear people talk about sick America, dying America, the end of America. The same kinds of things were said in 1861, in 1893, in 1933, and in 1968. The sickness, the death, is always a moral condition. Maybe this comes from our Puritan heritage. If we are dying, it can’t be from natural causes. It must be a prolonged act of suicide, which is a form of murder. I don’t think we are dying. We have no choice but to live together—we’re quarantined as fellow citizens. Knowing who we are lets us see what kinds of change are possible. Countries are not social-science experiments. They have organic qualities, some positive, some destructive, that can’t be wished away. Our passion for equality, the individualism it produces, the hustle for money, the love of novelty, the attachment to democracy, the distrust of authority and intellect—these won’t disappear. A way forward that tries to evade or crush them on the road to some free, smart, real, or just utopia will never arrive and instead will run into a strong reaction. But a way forward that tries to make us Equal Americans, all with the same rights and opportunities—the only basis for shared citizenship and self-government—is a road that connects our past and our future. Meanwhile, we remain trapped in two countries. Each one is split by two narratives—Smart and Just on one side, Free and Real on the other. Neither separation nor conquest is a tenable future. The tensions within each country will persist even as the cold civil war between them rages on.

Read-o-Meter calculates that an average reader would need almost a full hour (57 minutes) to read this magazine-length "bad boy" attentively from top to bottom.



"Mission Accomplished"

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-30-2021).]