Charles M. Blow correctly identifies two Americas: one America consists of the voters who voted to re-elect President Obama, and the other America consists of the voters who did not vote to re-elect him. As Blow himself suggests, we should discuss this divide in light of our ideal of being a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are equal before the law of the land.

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(Article changed on November 24, 2012 at 16:42)

Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) November 24, 2012: In his column titled "Lincoln, Liberty and Two Americas" in the NEW YORK TIMES dated November 23, 2012, Charles M. Blow, an African American, quotes the well-known passage from President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in which he reflects on "the proposition that all men are created equal." Lincoln understood that the "great civil war" was "testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and dedicated, can long endure."

It still remains to be seen how long the nation dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal will endure. (Following the conventional usage of his time, Lincoln used the term "men" as a generic term to refer to all human persons, both men and women.)

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is a famous statement made by a President of the United States who had not been an abolitionist before he became President. Had he been an abolitionist, he would never have emerged as President of the United States.

But the white American novelist William Faulkner perceptively titled one of his novels about the American Civil War THE UNVANQUISHED. As a white commentator who grew up in Kansas City, Kansas and who then lived in St. Louis, Missouri for more than a decade, I would like to take a hint from that novel's title and suggest that many white Southerners who had supported the Confederacy remained unvanquished in their hearts and minds long after General Lee surrendered and that many Americans today still resist in their hearts and minds the radical experiment of a nation conceived and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal.

Moreover, in his novel ABSALOM, ABSALOM! Faulkner brilliantly uses his creative imagination to construct the character Thomas Sutpen, the strong and talented and enterprising self-made man who is a white supremacist slave-holder and manipulative sexist. Faulkner was prescient in connecting white supremacy and manipulative male patriarchy in his portrayal of Thomas Sutpen.

For the sake of discussion, I am going to say that Faulkner is basically right in connecting white supremacy and manipulative male patriarchy, just as he is basically right in suggesting that many people who supported the Confederacy remained unvanquished in their hearts and minds after the end of the American Civil War.

So in response to Charles M. Blow's column about two Americas today, I say, "Yes, the elections of 2012 show that there are indeed two Americas today: one is composed of Americans who in their hearts and minds would like to embrace the radical experiment of a nation conceived and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal, whereas the other is composed of Americans who in their hearts and minds want to resist the radical experiment of equality before the law and cling instead to white supremacy and to manipulative male patriarchy.

In his book THE OBAMA HATE MACHINE: THE LIES, DISTORTIONS, AND PERSONAL ATTACKS ON THE PRESIDENT -- AND WHO IS BEHIND THEM (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2012), Bill Press devotes an entire chapter (titled "The I Hate Obama Book Club," pages 137-175) to surveying 61 books critical of President Barack Obama. After some introductory discussion, Bill Press proceeds to list the 61 books alphabetically by each author's surname with complete bibliographic information about each book followed then by Bill Press's discussion of each book.

Now, if we were to buy into the attacks on Obama advanced in those 61 books, we might imagine that he is some kind of radical liberal. But for the most part, Obama has governed as a centrist, not as a radical liberal.

Indeed, after President Obama won re-election, William Saletan at SLATE MAGAZINE online published an article telling the GOP to cheer up because we had just elected a moderate Republican. I understand his point. However, he does not comment explicitly on the trend of radical Republicans attempting to purge moderate Republicans from the party by referring to them pejoratively as Republicans in name only (RINOS, for short).

Certain Republicans like to console themselves by repeating the mantra that we are a center-right nation. It makes me sad to say, but, yes, today we probably are a center-right nation. However, for the most part President Obama has governed as a center-right president. But the very same Republicans who repeat the mantra about our being a center-right nation do not seem to take any comfort from having a center-right President. On the contrary, they assail him for an endless array of thought crimes, some of which are real but many of which are imaginary. Indeed, he seems to be a lightning rod for conservative attacks, as First Lady Hilary Clinton was for years a lightning rod for a vast right-wing conspiracy.

To be sure, Obama often pays lip-service to certain liberal ideas. Occasionally, he even shows some backbone and stands up for women's rights. As I say, I think that William Faulkner was prescient in connecting white supremacy and manipulative male patriarchy in his portrayal of Thomas Sutpen. Because of the color of President Obama's skin, it is not hard to understand why people whose attitude of white supremacy remains unvanquished in their hearts and minds would see him as a symbolic target to their reservations about the proposition that all men and women are created equal. Because he occasionally shows some backbone in supporting women's rights, it is not hard to understand why he has drawn the fire of rear-guard defenders of manipulative male patriarchy.

But if all men and women are by nature equal because all of us share the same human nature, then our nation is dedicated to a radical proposition, and a government dedicated to such a radical proposition is a radical experiment in human history.

So I agree with Charles M. Blow that today there are two Americas, just as there were two Americas before the American Civil War. The American Civil War settled certain legal issues. Nevertheless, white supremacy and manipulative male patriarchy live on in the hearts and minds of many Americans today. President Obama's re-election in 2012 did not resolve this divide between the two Americas today.

Another civil war will not resolve this divide in the hearts and minds of the American people, just as the American Civil War did not once and for all resolve this divide in the hearts and minds of 19th-century Americans.

Nor would the assassination of President Obama resolve this divide, just as the assassinations of President Lincoln, President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, did not resolve this divide in the hearts and minds of earlier Americans.

How can this divide between the two Americas be resolved? I am sorry to say that I have no specific suggestions to offer President Obama about how he might proceed to try to resolve this divide in the hearts and minds of the American people. But I don't think that he should try to ignore it.

Regardless of how he might choose to thematize this divide in the hearts and minds of Americans in his speeches in the future, I would urge him to thematize this divide and to talk about it publicly, perhaps even in his second inaugural address. For understandable reasons, President Lincoln's second inaugural address is not as famous his Gettysburg Address. Nevertheless, President Lincoln's second inaugural address sets a lofty tone that President Obama should also aspire to set in his second inaugural address. For example, he should assure his fellow Americans that he has no malice toward Republican obstructionists in Congress or other Republicans or other Americans who voted against his re-election for whatever reasons.

The divide between the two Americas is not a can that President Obama should just kick down the road, as the Founding Fathers kicked the issue of slavery down the road for a future time. At the very least, President Obama should remind us that our American nation is dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal and that we as a nation still have much work to do to live up to this ideal.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview