The country is divided in two halves. Plus another half.
During the last presidential election, one thing became crystal clear: our country is split into two halves — those who voted for Biden, and those who voted for Trump. Plus another half, who didn’t vote at all. Plus a fourth half who are the seven million more people who voted for Biden than for Trump, but who we didn’t count in the first two halves because the first two halves needed to be even, so we could say the country is split into two halves.
To put it simply, these United States are deeply divided across party lines, and it’s a dead heat. Half are Democrats, and half are Republicans. And then the other half aren’t. And that half is the size of the first two halves combined. And a final half didn’t want to talk to us. And then one more half are babies.
We are living in two Americas. One America believes in strengthening our democratic institutions. The other America believes the system has succumbed to conspiracies.
A third America is getting excited for Vanderpump Rules to return.
A fourth America “doesn’t really care about the Oscars this year, but yeah, I’ll probably watch.”
A fifth America just tried its first cold plunge based on the advice of a friend and hated it, but they’re going to pretend like it was a really invigorating way to start the day.
A seventh America is wondering why they have to do their own taxes every year like it’s a little exam, when the IRS already knows what they owe.
An eighth America is asking why we skipped the sixth America.
Which America are you?
The truth is, inside of you are two Americas. And also a few other Americas. In fact, your body is made up of 36 trillion cells — each of which is an America.
But look outside of your many-America body, and you’ll see that the deep divisions of these United States are not new. Back in the days of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson there were between two and five million different halves of the country. But the split down the middle of our nation is more pronounced today than ever before, especially since there are now about 330 million different middles.
Which is why it’s increasingly important to talk about all of them as if they’re just two things.
It’s a great time to buy my book
In case (somehow) you missed it, my debut collection is out. It’s called This Won’t Help, and it’s chock-full of 100 “divinely wry” satirical essays, both timely and timeless. It was on The New Yorker’s list of best books of 2023, in case that helps.
That’s all for today. Thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll see half of you soon, and the other two halves soon too.
You forgot to mention the half of Americans who are not very good with math, and struggle to add together all the halves to make a whole.
Someone like to think that it’s a divided America sure the elites and the powerful prop up whatever puppet candidate they want to that will do the bidding for them whether it be Trump Biden, Obama, we all ended up with endless wars, the rich getting richer and the divide is really with the wealth The severity of the wealth has never been greater in any other country in history from my understanding correct me if I’m wrong maybe I’m just thinking about more recent history past couple hundred years. But basically America is about killing other people and other nations we killed over 20 million Muslims after 911 we continue to wage war in the Middle East as if it’s all backyard. We patrolled the world as if it is ours and then when a country like China gets upset because we’re patrolling the China Sea we are aghast. I have wonderful dreams of China and Russian ships patrol and Cuba providing them with security and that’s weird because I’m an American man am I sick and tired of the death that America delivers the election cycles in America similar to you and I going to Vegas and pulling up slot machines we get that anticipatory buzz thinking all we’re gonna win and we lose all of us and then we go back again in four years. Try it again.