slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

By Justin Fox

Posted: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 12:01 am

The political history of the U.S. from the late 1830s through the 1850s is one long tragedy. President after president struggled to hold together an increasingly polarized nation. None served more than one term, two died in office — and by 1860 the country was falling apart.

We hear a lot these days that we’re in a new age of polarization, with measures of partisanship showing a divide greater than at any time since the Civil War. But there’s a striking difference: It’s pretty clear what the polarization of the 1830s through 1850s was about. Nowadays that’s much harder to figure out.

All this is on my mind because I’ve just spent several days driving up and down Interstate 95 listening to Lillian Cunningham’s “Presidential” podcast. Cunningham is a reporter and editor at the Washington Post and, since the beginning of the year, she has been offering up weekly 30- to 45-minute examinations of the presidents, in chronological order. I recommend them.

For reasons not worth going into here, I decided to start with Martin Van Buren, who was elected in 1836. Van Buren had just finished serving a term as Andrew Jackson’s vice president; before that he had built the political machine that got Jackson elected. He’s considered the inventor of modern party politics. But his presidency started with the worst economic downturn the young nation had yet experienced and never really got much better — with a standoff over whether to admit Texas to the Union as a slave-holding state one of the signature issues.

After that I really had to hear what came next. I skipped Van Buren’s successor, William Henry Harrison, because he died just 32 days after taking office, and went straight to John Tyler. Then it was James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Failure after failure after failure.

Well, not Polk. During his one term, from 1845 to 1849, the U.S. annexed Texas, wrested the territories of Nuevo Mexico and Alta California from Mexico, and cut a deal with Britain for the parts of the Oregon Territory below the 49th parallel. Polk created the modern, continent-spanning United States — and probably would have been re-elected in 1848 if he hadn’t held to his pledge to serve just one term. But even he didn’t do anything to resolve the great conflict tearing the country apart. In fact, his acquisitions provided lots of new territory to fight over.

The conflict was over slavery, and whether it would be allowed to spread. Since the Missouri Compromise of 1820 the basic idea had been to balance political power between the North and South by keeping the number of free and slave states equal. By the late 1830s, westward expansion was testing this balancing act and, by the mid-1850s, it had completely broken down — with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” published in 1852, sharply reducing the Northern appetite for compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 turning the slave-versus-free-state deliberations into a bloody free-for-all.

Or something like that. I make no claim to expertise on this period. Apart from a couple of books read years ago and a bunch of Googling over the past few hours, my knowledge really is based entirely on “Presidential” podcasts. In those podcasts, one of Cunningham’s interviewees will occasionally remark that some long-ago conflict or sign of political dysfunction is reminiscent of today. I kept being struck, though, by the differences.

Back then it really was all about slavery. And because of slavery, the South became utterly different from the North, with the differences only growing as the North industrialized and urbanized while the South stayed agricultural and rural. They were two countries, quite foreign to each other.

Now, by contrast, I’m hard-pressed to describe the single great ideological divide across which Americans have become so polarized. Sometimes it’s religious versus secular. Sometimes it’s educated versus less-educated. Sometimes it’s pro-immigration versus anti. Sometimes it’s big government versus small government. Sometimes it’s gun-toters versus gun-controllers. Sometimes it’s fossil-fuel fans versus windmill-lovers. Sometimes it’s old versus young. Sometimes (not much, actually) it’s rich versus poor. I’m sure you can come up with lots more.

As for geographic differences, too, coasts versus center and North versus South come up a lot, but it’s easy to find exceptions. Urban versus rural — or, more accurately, cities and inner suburbs versus outer suburbs and exurbs, because rural areas now account for a small and shrinking share of the population — may be the most consistent divide. It’s an economic divide, too, with growth increasingly concentrated in a few big metropolitan areas, and cities gaining (by some metrics, at least) on suburbs.

It’s really hard to envision the nation’s exurbs going to war with its cities. That seems reassuring — we’re probably not on the verge of another civil war! But it’s also puzzling. What exactly is it that we’re all so angry at each other about then?

PaulPisces Loc: San Francisco

Thanks for sharing this, Slatten.

I would say the consistent thread through all our divisiveness is fear of "the other". We are perhaps the most diverse large country in history (in race, in political thought, in economic status, in geography.) And where our size once regulated the ability of this diversity to meet head-on, our digital age has erased any buffer that distance once might have provided. Everyone instantly knows what everyone else is feeling, seeing, thinking.

Our challenge is, as it always has been, to find common ground in the midst of our diversity. To rebuke those that inflame our fears for political gain. To realize that in almost every case, to make room for other views, to share what we each have, is not a threat at all, but something that can strengthen us as a society unlike any other.

Wolf counselor Loc: Heart of Texas

What else should we expect.

The country is over run with faggots, illegals, militant spooks, muslims, peckerwood democrats, red neck republicans and a growing number of refugees.

This ain't no church social bubba.

And don't expect us to miraculously learn to coexist harmoniously.

That won't happen until AFTER Armageddon.

Prepare for war and the sweet release of resting in peace.

S. Maturin

Slatten, you and Fox will have to deepen your view a bit to accommodate one real, hard, new, fact- an economic fact which is going to make the past and even today look like a 'bed of roses'.

A man by the name of Andrew Stuttaford penned a brilliant essay titled ROBOT ENVY which addresses the coming shock due to something called 'elite overproduction'.

The economy is about to tankl and the restless rabble is likely to be led into revolution by un- and under-employed Ivy League grads who will not be easily mollified into flippin' burgers or receiving government subsistence allowances.

Check out Finland's new economy move- the UBI.. that's what is seen as coming to the USA before 2050.

"Brace for impact."

That said, a lot of our divisiveness has to due to Barack Hussein Obama's 'manifest destiny' approach in sowing virulent racism.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Thank you, Paul, for the kind of response with which I can identify and couldn't agree with more. I think you are spot on. Paraphrasing what Spencer Tracey's Henry Drummond character from 'Inherit The Wind' said...'progress is rarely a bargain, it always comes at a cost.'

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Wolf, my friend, I say the same to you as I did to Paul...both progress (?) and change are rarely a bargain...they always come at a cost.

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

I doubt anybody really knows or can find out. Perhaps historians will find some common denominator in 50 years or so, assuming we're still here. I've asked over 50 people similar questions and gotten over 50 different responses. There are some things repeated by the respondents, but not enough to for an "aha!" moment. In days past, folks areas of concern were smaller, dealing with the crops, the children and limited pretty much to one's own neighborhood and State, with a little room for the rest of the Nation and not much for the rest of the world. Now days, we're connected to everywhere simultaneously 24/7/365.

Trying to find folks today that thought exactly as one does, is an exercise in futility, leading to madness. Folks just have too many opinions about too many things. It isn't even really "polarization" anymore, which would imply two opposing forces, when in fact - there are 100's of opposing forces. Finding a Baptist that's also a conservative is easy, finding one that is exactly the same type of Baptist that believes exactly the same way about religion and all the conservative varieties, is nigh impossible. So, folks try to find groups that are as close as possible and stick to them like glue. Southern Baptists don't associate with Free Will Baptists, who don't associate with General Baptists and so on. Then you have conservatives who are OK with abortion or contraception and those that are not. You have liberals that are against abortion, or LGBT rights and those that are for all of it.

There are 1000's of social/economic/political issues world wide we are aware of now, and finding someone who agrees 100% with our own "take" on these, is just not possible and adding religion to the mix further limits the possibility. We now have 100's if not 10's of 1000's of tiny handfuls of groups that are closely aligned, none of which have any desire to "compromise", "negotiate", or "cooperate" or any of the other hateful words meaning "surrender". Perhaps it's case of having spent so much effort and angst finding our "peeps", that we're very reluctant to lose any of our "uniqueness" by including folks that are a little off.

BTW, none of the folks I questioned about this type of thing, had any interest whatsoever in talking to folks that were close to their own thinking, but whom they would not smoke cigars with.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

By George, Doc, I think you've presented a reasonable explanation for the complexity/confusion/angst in today's society.

alabuck Loc: Tennessee

Slatten,
If I may interject my thoughts: being a student and observer of US history and our political processes, your post was, I feel, mostly true. Where I differ is in the realm of discourse. Never, in my 65 years on this planet, have I been exposed to so much animosity, negativity, crass language, and refusal to even try to acknowledge, much less, understand, another's point of view. And, the new "4-letter word" is 'compromise.' "Pity the fool" that even thinks that compromise will get our country moving in any direction.

To me, it began in earnest with Bill Clinton getting elected. Until them, I'd never heard of talk radio talking more than sports, religion or book reviews on NPR. With the arrival of radio talk show personalities like Rush Limbaugh, decorum, or what there was of it, left the building. Politicians quit caring about governing the country and concentrated on getting re-elected at the expense of assassinating the character of their political opponents. The issues be damned, which led to, the country be damned.

Where have our political statesmen and stateswomen gone to? The old, Peter, Paul and Mary song says, "Gone to graveyards, everyone." Their were singing about soldiers. But, today, their lyrics could be assigned to our politics.

Eight years ago, the GOPTP leader in the Senate state that it was the main goal of the GOPTP to make Obama a 1-term president. They spent the next 4 years focused on just that. Governing the country became an afterthought. Their main tactics were foot-dragging and fillabustering. Instead of honestly giving an effort to work with Obama, they'd leave the meeting(s) if they were t going to get everything they wanted. Then, they'd hold a news conference, claiming they weren't even allowed to speak.

More of their tactics involved making up lies about Obama's citizenship; whether or not he was a Christian or a Muslim; or even if he went to the college he claimed to have gone to. Now, there's nothing wrong with vetting a candidate, but, to make up lies, cast dispersions, make innuendos, then, to keep repeating them, over and over and over; even after they've been shown to be false, to me, is beyond the benefit of political gain, it is hypocracy in its truest form.

Since Obama became president, I'm not lost one of my guns to government confiscation. In fact, the. Umber of guns in my collection has tripled, from 5 to 15. I e not lost access to my physician, either. Nor, my healthcare insurance. In fact, since Obama was elected, I retired and now, I bring in more money than when I was working.

The millions of "illegals" that are swarming all over the country seem to be far nicer than the WASPs I deal with. The illegals help out our economy by paying sales taxes on everything they buy. That helps my state out as well as my city and county. Many do jobs that the WASP Americans refuse to do as it's beneath them. Without the illegals, much of our produce wouldn't get to market because there's nobody else to harvest the crops. The work's "too hard" for our pansey-assed WASPs to do.

I suppose I could continue writing and adding to my rant, but so much of what I see and hear is nothing more than gibberish designed to make people afraid of their neighbor's. Jesus told us to "... love your neighbor as yourself." For a group (read that the GOPTP) that claim to be faithful Christians and want us to return to our "Christsin roots," they're not acting like the
Christians they pretend to be. In fact, Christianity is supposed to be an "inclusionary" faith. I've never seen more Christians trying to "exclude" their neighbors than I've witnessed before; especially since living in the Deep South.

Little Ball of Hate

It is pretty simple, really. It is a failure to obey what Jesus said.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself. If you loved others, all of our problems would disappear. Love can do no harm. Every problem we suffer from is the result of selfishness, at the expense of others, because we do not love them. Name one that isn't. You can't.

It's really that simple.

PeterS

The effort is to destroy society not strengthen it though. Conservatives have long hated liberals and now liberals are beginning to return the sentiment. We are like a nation with sectarian beliefs but instead of using those beliefs to strengthen the whole we now seem determined to tear the whole apart. I have never seen such a visceral hatred of a person as conservatives have had for Obama these past years. And the thing is it never abated but instead blocked any ability to reason from seeping in. The same thing applies to Hillary--they have an entire conspiracy mill devoted to creating false stories that, of course, every conservative out there believes as if it were the gospel. I think it has gone beyond psychotic to the point where it has become psychopathic and down right dangerous. If nothing else it completely destroyed the ability to think rationally and once that has happened any chance at civility is gone...

PeterS

You don't obey Jesus. You've built an entire world that is a lie and no one espouses more hatred than you. You've picked a name that fits you perfectly. You can't even be honest about Bush and Cheney and last I checked you conservatives didn't like them very much. You're a member of the blind leading the blind and your world is so fuking fragile that you can't even be challenged by others around you. You certainly are one to talk and I have never met anyone who thought that because you act upon a lie that somehow you become culpable for those actions. That, my friend, is the most screwed up form of logic I have ever run across in my life.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the true religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste." [quote/MarkTwain] from 'The Lowest Animal.'

Also, from Twain...

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him."... Mark Twain, a Biography

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Alabuck, as much as anyone's, your thoughts are always most welcome. Thank you for those expressed here.

PaulPisces Loc: San Francisco

I often paraphrase the good Mr. Twain by saying "I don't go to church, but the church I don't go to is Episcopal."
(I think he might have said Presbyterian)