Throughout this election cycle, pundits have told themselves that America has never been more divided. Yet as Sebastian Milbank wrote, the cycle has never been this weird. Issues that shouldn’t matter have been overexposed to the public (Haitian dietary habits anyone?). Meanwhile, dramatic events have flashed feverishly by: three assassination attempts, an incumbent President dropping out and a Kennedy supporting a Republican. 

So, does chaos lie ahead? Don’t bet on it. In spite of all the polarisation, America has a fine life ahead and will not face secession or a civil war.    

Recently I was on an Australian election tour to Washington DC and New York with a group of political tragics, visiting these institutions that make up America’s politics and culture. Most of my fellow attendees serve or have served as staffers for politicians at some point in their careers  and are friends with one another. As someone who never held a job in politics, it gave me some useful insight into the lives of these insiders, from partisan commentators and consultants to think tank directors. 

Some of the participants will have used the trip as an opportunity to consider political issues. Others will have been furthering their careers. The majority of them support the empty agenda of Kamala Harris, despite spending some of their time directly involved in Australia’s largest centre right party. Such a tour is essentially made for insiders by insiders. 

Understandably, the election — with its heated and bombastic discourse, and its exposure of fissures in American society (such as that between young men and young women) — has made people on all sides anxious. It seems as civil society is tottering — as if everyone is at each other’s throats. But are they? Or is that simply how it appears if one is in politics or the media?

A tour guide I spoke to in the Arlington National Cemetery suggested that the majority of Americans are removed from politics — either because they’re apolitical or because they think that politicians do not address issues that they care about, like healthcare or balancing the budgets. Another person, who lives in Virginia, stated that the culture wars being played out in America have left him politically independent — free from the tribalism of either the Democrats or the Republicans. 

This dynamic has always played out for the best for America, even if it remains baffling for the outsider. When visiting the US, Lee Kuan Yew was disturbed by the “poverty among the great wealth” and “excessive rights of the individual at the expense of the community.” But Kuan Yew was amazed that the country has been through many turbulent times — the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War 2 — and managed to recover rapidly. 

This can be seen today. After the pandemic, the American economy has rebounded dramatically, and now violent crime and poverty rates are going down. Despite the ballooning of identity politics, America’s liberal values are far from being ultimately subverted. For all of the radicals one sees howling online, the average American just isn’t that furiously invested in politics.

A prediction that has not stood up to scrutiny this year is that 2024 would be a repeat of 1968. It’s easy to compare our times with the year that contained the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson not contesting the election, and protests against the Vietnam War on university campuses. America then was as intensely polarised as it is today. But the similarities stop there, because 2024 has not been as violent or as consequential as 1968, which led to the turbulent 70s, with soaring rates of violent crime, government corruption and high inflation. 

… the country will be fine. It will live through it, like it always has

More recently, the drama of Trump’s triumph in 2016 was not sustained. Indeed, forget the noisy rhetoric of the period and the years that followed it will look anticlimactic. Threats of revolution came to nothing, and Trump could never implement his most dramatic policy ideas. (What happened to that wall?) Expect much the same to happen this time.

Predicting that America will be okay after a turbulent election doesn’t mean being blindly optimistic. But the overheated rhetoric employed in American politics has been unhealthy, and addressing the nation’s challenges in a sober manner is the way to move forward and make a difference. America may look broken, and terrible events will doubtless happen under Trump’s second term. But the country will be fine. It will live through it, like it always has. As Alexis De Tocqueville once said in Democracy in America, “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”