I WANT A D-I-V-O-R-C-E
Americans' July 4th Message to Each Other
July 4th, 250 years ago, George Washington, recently appointed commander of the Continental Army, issued general orders to those already under arms that they were now “Troops of the United Provinces of North America”.
Open rebellion against the British crown had begun 90 days previously around Boston with the battles of Lexington and Concord and then Bunker Hill. Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain had been captured. Washington was in Massachusetts on this July 4th before the famous one. In his message to the troops he spoke of unity:
“Distinctions of Colonies will be laid aside; so that one and the same Spirit may animate the whole, and the only Contest be, who shall render, on this great and trying occasion, the most essential service to the Great and common cause in which we are all engaged."
A quarter of a millennium later can you see Americans united by ‘one and the same spirit’? Half of America hates the other half. This hatred is expressed daily with a rhetorical violence that is increasingly leading to physical violence.
Lincoln was right,
“A house divided against itself cannot stand”.
Today we see that house crumbling around us. America in 2025 is two societies without a common reality.
It is as divided as any of the societies whose civil wars I have covered: Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Iraq. Those three conflicts were heralded and then sustained by the kind of rhetoric that has been a part of American life for decades and at an accelerated rate in the Trump era.
We have been in a state of cold Civil War for a long time, the partisanship of politics reflects that.
The next step would be extreme violence leading to the break-up of the country or the end of our democratic form of government to be replaced by strongman dictatorship.
In 2019 I gave a talk in the Stoke Newington Literary Festival that outlined a solution. I took the title from Ms. Tammy
It was meant to be humorous in a Jonathan Swift, “the starving Irish should eat their babies to stop the overpopulation that causes famine” kind of way. Today I am much more serious.
It is too easy for those of us who find the above image repulsive to forget that nearly half of Americans are fine with opening this facility. I do not recognize those who are ok with Alligator Alcatraz as my fellow citizens. We do not share the same idea of America in our souls. We are beyond calling them out or trying to persuade them. The differences are irreconcilable.
Does D-I-V-O-R-C-E make sense? Why not?
The US was born from divorce. We talk about Revolution but it really was the 13 British colonies in North America divorcing themselves from Britain. The Declaration of Independence is essentially a bill of divorcement.
Every one knows the money quote from the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident - that all men are created equal …
But many don’t know the words that come before:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Then comes the famous bit about self-evident truths, as a way of giving the people of the colonies standing against King George III and his government:
All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Then, more magnificent rhetoric from Jefferson and we get to this, the Bill of Divorcement:
“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”
And facts are submitted with charges that begin, (read the full list here):
He has refused … He has forbidden … He has dissolved …
None of the actions listed were done with the colonists’ consent.
If I were to begin composing a bill of divorcement to get shot of MAGA Americans, I would focus on the political party that represents them, the Republicans, and use the words of Jefferson’s Virginia neighbor James Madison.
In Federalist 10, James Madison argued that a union of all 13 states was the best way to counter the dangers of groups of citizens banding together and holding inflexible beliefs. Madison called these groups, factions:
“By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
Madison understood that passion can and will animate people and argued that electing a representative body of the best people could temper those passions. But he wasn’t naive. He understood the situation could be corrupted.
“Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages (the votes), and then betray the interests of the people.”
And that is today’s Republican party summarized: factious tempers, local prejudices and in their quick obeisance to Donald Trump, sinister designs. They “betray the best interests of the people”, in other words they are “traitors”.
Pretty good reason to divorce them.
There is another important reason I would instruct my lawyer to bring up in divorce court:
Change. The passage of time.
“We’ve grown apart,” the parents explain to their children. Flaws that always existed in a relationship have never been worked out or reconciled as time passed. They keep resurfacing. The centuries have not brought an end to the differences in American society so obvious at the founding, recapitulated in the Civil War, and now exploding in the full ugliness of the Trump Era. The Confederate mindset has never really gone away.
America is old now. Nations come. Nations go. Nations change. No nation is forever.
The nation is not a gift from God, even though you will find preachers in America who will dispute that.
A quarter of a century ago, in the last brief moment of American national unity following the 9/11 attack, I interviewed Gore Vidal for a radio documentary called Pax Americana. He foresaw where the country was headed and told this story from the time when Rome was transitioning from Republic to Empire.
“The Senate sent Tiberius a message to the effect that whatever the Divine Emperor wanted in the way of legislation they would grant him in advance. And he sent back a message that said:‘Suppose the Emperor is insane. Suppose he is in the hands of lunatic people. Suppose what he wants is criminal and wrong and against all of our customs. You cannot grant any Emperor including myself that power.’
And then he added, ‘How eager you are to be slaves.’”
I’ve thought of that quote a lot watching the MAGA/GOP congress grant Trump his every wish.
The US today is much more divided than it was in the late 60s. I know. I was there. The divisions are deeper, more abstract and existential.
In the 60s there were two main issues dividing the country. The issues were clear, had roots in history and a moral dimension: Civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War.
There was well-organized political activism in support of —and to a lesser degree against — these issues. The elected national Government, to a degree, reflected the differences and sought to mediate between the conflicting points of view. That is how democratic societies are supposed to work.
As President Nixon’s abuses of power came to light, both parties in Congress worked together to curtail presidential overreach and put legislation in place to make sure it didn’t happen again.
The Nation held together.
And here we are 50 years later: US soldiers garrison the world, but are not fighting a for real war with half a million soldiers in one small country, with a draft in place to make sure there’s a conveyor belt of bodies to feed that beast.
Racism has made a public return and voting rights are being nipped and tucked at the edges but it is nothing like the end days of Jim Crow, when murder was a common occurrence in the South and America’s progressive leaders were gunned down, one after the other.
And yet the US feels today like it cannot hold together and more importantly should not hold together. There’s already a secession movement being organized in California and it’s serious even if it sounds like a joke.
All over the country people are wondering How can “we” get out of this mess without another civil war? Many MAGAts wouldn’t mind having one.
As I said earlier I have covered three civil wars of varying degrees of intensity and at different stages of conflict: Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Iraq. I know what a civil war looks like. Believe me, you don’t want to go there.
Divorce is a better option, and it’s time to accept that. There is much more to say about this, not least how do you break up a country that stretches from sea to shining sea, and future FRDH newsletters will, but it’s a holiday weekend so I’ll stop writing now.
But please don’t stop thinking about America this 4th of July. Since I left America 40 years ago it has unintentionally become my life’s work, telling the story of America’s descent from victory in World War 2 to Donald Trump and what it has meant to be an American in this time.
Take time to listen this weekend to these short FRDH, First Rough Draft of History podcasts on the subject.
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1. This is a timeline through the revolution taken from Washington’s papers. Excellent way to follow how the Revolution progressed
You are the one voice I trust on this matter. Keep it going.