I spent my Fourth of July in New York City – hanging out in Times Square during the celebration there, attending a Yankees game, and watching fireworks with 500 of my closest friends on a cruise boat on the Hudson River.
Over the course of the day, here is what I saw and heard.
I saw Americans of every conceivable race, creed, and color joyously celebrating the birth of our country two and a half centuries ago. I saw Indian American parents explaining the significance of the day to their children. I saw a crowd at Yankee Stadium mesmerized by United States Army Staff Sergeant Madison Baldwin’s rendition of our national anthem, giving her a thunderous round of applause when she finished. No celebrity performance. Just a woman from Fort Payne, Alabama, choosing to serve her country and bringing the house down at Yankee Stadium.
I heard spontaneous outbreaks of crowds chanting “USA, USA, USA” throughout the day – often in totally unexpected moments. I heard my fellow cruise passengers spontaneously singing “Happy Birthday” to America and the national anthem during the fireworks, drowning out the disco music blaring over the ship’s PA system. I heard a black man standing beside me on the ship marveling at the fireworks display, repeating over and over, “No place but America.”
I saw people embracing, weeping, laughing, and dancing – filled with joy and pride to be Americans.
Let me tell you what I did not see or hear.
I did not see anyone wearing a MAGA cap. I did not see anyone wearing a Democratic-socialist T-shirt. In fact, I did not see any clothing with political messages at all. I did not see any Black Lives Matter banners, rainbow flags, or American flags flown upside down. I did not hear anyone arguing politics or ranting about how bad the other side was. In the moment, there were no sides.
Since 1948, the American National Election Studies have been surveying Americans about politics, elections, ideology, and public opinion. Those surveys do not show a country neatly divided into two hostile camps on every issue. To the contrary, they consistently show a large middle – sometimes moderate, sometimes ambivalent, and often more complicated than the partisan caricatures we see on cable news and social media. A recent University of Maryland project found something similar, identifying hundreds of policy positions that draw majority support from both Democrats and Republicans. The truth is that there is more consensus in this country than our politics usually allows us to see, especially given how large and diverse we are.
The truth is also that the current cast of craven political leaders, who value partisan loyalty over the best interests of the country, do not represent the fundamental goodness and common sense of the American people. Neither do the so-called journalists who dishonor that noble profession by hyping partisan narratives for clickbait and notoriety. It is little wonder that the American people hold both groups in such low regard.
A Union Civil War general named Carl Schurz once captured the spirit of patriotic correction when he said, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” Futurist and geopolitical commentator George Friedman has predicted that America is headed for a political reckoning sometime around the end of this decade. It cannot come soon enough.
