Two nations divisible?

Marilynne Robinson has an interesting article ($$) in the NYRB about, among other things, the extent to which America in 2025 is most accurately understood as two different nations occupying the same territory, and exchanging control of a single national government:

 [T]here is also a clash of worldviews that is rarely acknowledged. The country is said now to be polarized, an image that implies that we lie along the same continuum of belief, at opposite extremes but with an expansive middle ground between the two sides that awaits only certain moderating concessions to bring us closer. This metaphor does not really suggest the nature of our problem or the depth of it. It has not been helpful. It is past time to try considering a new image for our situation.

We might think of America as two nations of roughly comparable power, contending with each other for authority and resources and cultural influence. Since they occupy the same terrain and govern the same population, each of them, when it wins an election, is in effect superimposed on the other for a limited period. This system maintains equilibrium well enough, so long as both sides accept it. It has been manipulated, especially by means of laws that affect voters’ eligibility. Lately the Red side has claimed that the system is rigged by corrupt election workers or faulty machines. In these times, accusation is more potent by far than exculpation, since there is a prevalent cynicism that inclines the public to credit slander. Nevertheless, with all these defects and encumbrances, meaningful power has remained in the people’s hands.

This is increasingly plausible, but note that the account contains something of an internal contradiction. The concept of two nations doesn’t really track with the concept of political power remaining in “the people’s hands,” since the basically mystical concept of “the” people is usually thought, as a matter of political legitimation at least, to be more or less synonymous with the idea of “the” — as in one — nation.

This I think is somewhat obscured by the usages of the English language in regard to the underlying concept. Here’s the official government translation of the Constitution’s preamble into Spanish:

Nosotros, el pueblo de los Estados Unidos, con el fin de formar una Unión más perfecta,
establecer la justicia, garantizar la tranquilidad nacional, atender a la defensa común, fomentar el
bienestar general y asegurar los beneficios de la libertad para nosotros mismos y para nuestra
posteridad, por la presente promulgamos y establecemos esta Constitución para los Estados
Unidos de América.

“El pueblo” — literally “the town” — conjures up a more concrete and less metaphysically vague concept than “We the People.” Someone more learned in such matters can no doubt explain how the Greek word “polis” ended up being translated so much more literally in some languages than others, but I think this historical accident, if that’s what it is, could have considerable psychological/practical significance.

In any event, Robinson’s first point — that a quarter of the way through the 21st century, America has pretty much morphed into two separate and potentially irreconcilable nations living under a single nominal concept of nationhood — has a lot of force.

Of course on one level this is simply the continuation by other means of a Civil War that has never really ended. How it’s going to end is the great unacknowledged question of our politics at the present moment, and no doubt will be for some time to come.