Why I'm Still an Undecided Voter

Don't get me wrong. I've already made my choice and cast my ballot. But I haven't decided if America's future will be able to live up to its promise. Have you?

Cover of Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959) showing his photo of a segregated trolley in New Orleans (1955)

Alexis de Tocqueville’s iconic two-volume treatise Democracy in America made two observations about the still-young United States of the 1830s, which seem particularly relevant as the nation comes face-to-face with itself in this year’s contentious election.

Here’s the first:

Without common ideas, there is no common action, and without common action men still exist, but a social body does not. Thus in order that there be society, and all the more, that this society prosper, it is necessary that all the minds of the citizens always be brought together and held together by some principle ideas.

When the dust has settled on the 2024 election, America will likely be just as divided as it has been for nearly a decade. This is fact, not hyperbole. Otherwise, how could the presidential race have been neck-and-neck and too close to call? How could nearly half the electorate believe the 2020 election was stolen? And that Joseph Biden was not the legitimate president of the United States?

You don’t need a crystal ball to know the answer. It’s right there in de Tocqueville. Americans no longer share a common idea of what America is—or what it means to be American.

For example, half the country believes the January 6th attack on the Capitol was an insurrection, but the other half regards it as peaceful protest. While some believe the president should be immune to prosecution, others believe that no-one is above the law. While some agree that public officials should pledge to uphold the Constitution, others feel they should be loyal to the president.

These are fundamental disagreements about American identity

They are not policy issues like Ukraine, gun control, the Middle East, the federal deficit, or abortion. That is why they threaten the fabric and future of the American experiment.

The common thread that used to keep us together has frayed. There are alternative facts. Half the country doesn’t receive the same information as the other half. Or if they do, it’s been put through a spin machine or dismissed as agenda-driven by the evil other side as soon as its presented.

There used to be three networks. Now there are dozens as well as hundreds of podcasts and social media accounts pushing disinformation, misinformation, and outright lies—not for the good of the country, but for the good of their own bottom lines.

No wonder the nation is divided

We’ve been slimed. And we can’t call Ghostbusters to help us with this gluttonous shapeshifting specter. So who we gonna call?

What this county needs is a good 5-cent synthesis, said Saul Bellow. But how can we achieve a unified truthful idea about who we are when we no longer even agree on what the truth is?

During couples therapy, relationships that are on the rocks sometimes find a path to healing by remembering the early stages of their romance—when they looked out the window and saw the same vista, the same future. But that can’t happen when one partner is stuck in the prefrontal cortex and the other is in the limbic system’s fight-or-flight mode.

Those two parts of the human brain cannot speak to each other. Neither can a nation divided in the same way.

And yet, some couples do manage to overcome the threatening chasm. By turning back to the beginning. Remembering who they were. What they set out to be. And where their strengths lay.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a two-volume book in 1835 and 1840, which gave us that early portrait. Democracy in America also provided the other observation that seems especially relevant as we voters once again stand in the mirror and try to figure out who we are. This is how he put it:

If I were asked . . . to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people [the Americans] ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: to the superiority of their women.

Given his point of view, perhaps there’s hope that American women will provide the healing we need and point the way to a future that protects and preserves America’s true identity.

---

The photograph that accompanies today’s post

is the cover of another iconic portrait of America. This time in images. Robert Frank published his famous photography book in 1958 (in France) and in 1959 (in the United States). The book’s cover shows a New Orleans trolley in 1955 during the heyday of segregation. The white folks sit in the front. Blacks sit in the back. This photograph tells the truth about the prevailing social order of that period without saying a word. (See more images from the book at the end of today’s post.)

Most critics found Frank’s realistic images shocking. This was not the America they wanted to see or imagine. It was an unmasking. Robert Frank made us look in the mirror, and a lot of people didn’t what they saw. But Jack Kerouac described the images this way in his introduction:

The faces don’t editorialize or criticize or say anything but, ‘This is the way we are in real life and if you don’t like it I don’t know anything about it ‘cause I’m living my own life my way and God bless us all…mebbe [sic]…if we deserve it.’

That’s where we find ourselves as the 2024 presidential election moves into its final stage. Whatever happens when the dust settles, this election will be an unmasking. A mirror that further reveals who we are. No matter who wins, we will still be a nation in need of healing. So may God bless us all as we navigate the uncertainty that lies ahead.

©2024 Andrew Jazprose Hill

Thanks for reading/listening. Please be sure to hit the LIKE, SHARE, or COMMENT buttons to help others find my work.