America is divided to a degree it has not been since at least the Vietnam War, if not even since the Civil War.
By HERB KEINONHelicopter passes over the White House, seen behind a fence and protest posters, the day before the U.S. presidential election in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 2, 2020.(photo credit: ERIN SCOTT/REUTERS)
Finally, it’s over, millions of people are surely thinking in the United States and around the world.Finally, a campaign that started with the first Democratic debates in June 2019 is coming, mercifully, to an end. Finally, no more name-calling. Finally, no more screaming. Finally, no more sowing of divisions.America, after it casts its ballot on November 3, can return to its old self on November 4. The America we know. The America we respect. The America that provides a degree of certainty in an otherwise uncertain world.Finally.That’s the dream. The reality? Don’t bet on it.One of the beauties of the American political system – something that Americans who move to Israel often miss the most when they experience their first election in Israel – was election certainty.America goes to the polls on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November every fourth year to vote for its president – and it knows when it wakes up that Wednesday who the president will be.Moreover, the defeated candidate – late into the night or early in the next morning – will call his opponent and graciously concede. And then, one television anchor or another will talk about how one of America’s wonders is the peaceful transfer of power.That’s how it used to be. That’s how it always was – with the exception of the one election in 2000 when the country had to wait until the Supreme Court decided what to do about hanging chads on ballots in Florida and gave the election to George W. Bush – at least during the modern era.Neat. Orderly. Predictable. Positively un-Israeli.Here you go to the polls on one day, and you have to wait weeks before knowing who the prime minister is (in our most recent case, it essentially took 14 months and three shots in the ballot booth). But not America. That type of uncertainty could never happen in America.Yet it looks like this time, it will.Even before the final ballot has been cast in Alaska and Hawaii, petitions have already been filed in US courts about the voting. And that is only the beginning of what are expected to be numerous court challenges, leading to a process that could continue for weeks, even months. Few are talking about a clear-cut winner being declared by Wednesday morning.Even more troubling than the likelihood that a winner will not be known for weeks, is the sight of store keepers in Washington, New York and Los Angeles boarding up windows to their shops – a clear sign that they are not confident that the voting will go smoothly, and that they expect rioting, looting, even election eve violence on the streets. For the first time in memory, the people themselves are expressing doubt that this will be a peaceful transfer of power.The United States of America. Depressing.And there’s more. Some harbor the delusion that when the election is over, it’s over – along with all the ugliness that accompanied it. As if all of President Donald Trump’s awful words about his challenger Joe Biden, the Democrats and their supporters will magically be forgotten. As if all the moral arrogance of the anti-Trump faithful – who view anyone who votes for Trump as an ignorant cretin, or worse – will dissipate into thin air and the country will reunite.It won’t.If Trump wins, there may very well be rioting in the streets, and that will just be the beginning. There will be claims that the election was rigged, that Russia did something to skew the results. Those who were unable to accept the results of the Electoral College last time around will be no more ready to accept them this time.And if Biden wins, there may very well be rioting in the streets, and that will just be the beginning. There will be claims that the election was rigged, that Iran or China did something to skew the results. And the Republicans will be hell-bent on making life miserable for Biden from even before the inauguration, just as was done to Trump. Get ready for calls for impeachment and efforts to upend anything he will try to do.America is divided to a degree it has not been since at least the Vietnam War, if not even since the Civil War. And it’s not only over Trump. He’s the symptom, not the cause. If he disappears, other symptoms will emerge.America is divided over race, over values, over what America should strive to become, over what it wants to be. Trump’s tenure, and now these elections, have highlighted those divisions – they did not create them.So when the elections are over, and even if Trump is forced to exit, do not expect America to return to what it once was. It will need a unifier, a healer of unusual capabilities, to begin to unite the disparate parts.Unfortunately, there is no one out there right now who seems to fit the bill. For the good of America – and the world – let’s hope that someone emerges soon.
