This Land Is Your Land
How the Greatest Sociological Shift in United States History is Changing Everything. And What that Change Requires of Us.
(Or, How Each of Us Shapes the Fate of All of Us.)
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Message from the Author:
We can all feel it – this sense that our nation is immensely troubled. Take our political process. This year, not unlike in 2020, the prevailing belief we Americans seem to share is that the fate of the nation is at stake. And while we’re not wrong, we’re also not completely right. What makes this election so significant is that it’s less about the people running and the political parties backing them than it is about us, the people voting – and the future we’re voting for – a society that works for only some of us or one that works for all of us. “Some” or “all”. That’s really what’s at stake. And perhaps it always has been.
Over the years, we’ve framed it many ways – us or them, black or white, red state or blue, left or right, straights or queers, the faithful or the godless, patriots or commies, natives or immigrants – thinking that if we can just tweak the formula, draw the right lines and incite the right levels of enmity and outrage, we can win. But today, there are two fundamental differences, one triggering the other. First, our core social franchises, from racial whiteness to American Christianity to heteronormativity, have either already lost their elevated status gained by being the majority or are on their way to losing it. In all the ways we currently measure, we’ll soon be a post-majority nation. This leads to the second difference: Over the years, we’ve built an entire society on majoritarianism – "majority rules" - catering to the majority at the minority’s expense. But now that system itself is crumbling, and its processes, are increasingly incompatible with the diverse people we’ve become. Because, in a democracy, it's not the majority that rules. The people do.
Which gets to the root problem -- despite our founding aspiration of being a new kind of nation, one conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal, we’ve found that calling difficult to live up to. We’d disavow our societal kin so often and strip one another of their humanity so vigorously that, today, we’re often left wondering if concepts like the "United" States and "democracy" are still viable. Our pledge still ends with “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”, but increasingly, what we really mean is “for some”. And in an ever-changing and diversifying world, “for some”, no matter how it’s defined, ultimately comes to mean one thing – none.
Though not necessarily obvious, societies are living entities. And if there’s one fundamental truth about their existence, it’s this: they start to die the day we determine that certain people, whoever they are, don’t matter. But that doesn’t have to be our future. If we so choose, we can emerge from this crucible better than before, and in doing so, move ever closer to becoming the nation so many who have come before us have dreamed of. My hope is that this book can play some small role in helping us get there.
RD Moore
We can all feel it – this sense that our nation is immensely troubled. Take our political process. This year, not unlike in 2020, the prevailing belief we Americans seem to share is that the fate of the nation is at stake. And while we’re not wrong, we’re also not completely right. What makes this election so significant is that it’s less about the people running and the political parties backing them than it is about us, the people voting – and the future we’re voting for – a society that works for only some of us or one that works for all of us. “Some” or “all”. That’s really what’s at stake. And perhaps it always has been.
Over the years, we’ve framed it many ways – us or them, black or white, red state or blue, left or right, straights or queers, the faithful or the godless, patriots or commies, natives or immigrants – thinking that if we can just tweak the formula, draw the right lines and incite the right levels of enmity and outrage, we can win. But today, there are two fundamental differences, one triggering the other. First, our core social franchises, from racial whiteness to American Christianity to heteronormativity, have either already lost their elevated status gained by being the majority or are on their way to losing it. In all the ways we currently measure, we’ll soon be a post-majority nation. This leads to the second difference: Over the years, we’ve built an entire society on majoritarianism – "majority rules" - catering to the majority at the minority’s expense. But now that system itself is crumbling, and its processes, are increasingly incompatible with the diverse people we’ve become. Because, in a democracy, it's not the majority that rules. The people do.
Which gets to the root problem -- despite our founding aspiration of being a new kind of nation, one conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal, we’ve found that calling difficult to live up to. We’d disavow our societal kin so often and strip one another of their humanity so vigorously that, today, we’re often left wondering if concepts like the "United" States and "democracy" are still viable. Our pledge still ends with “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”, but increasingly, what we really mean is “for some”. And in an ever-changing and diversifying world, “for some”, no matter how it’s defined, ultimately comes to mean one thing – none.
Though not necessarily obvious, societies are living entities. And if there’s one fundamental truth about their existence, it’s this: they start to die the day we determine that certain people, whoever they are, don’t matter. But that doesn’t have to be our future. If we so choose, we can emerge from this crucible better than before, and in doing so, move ever closer to becoming the nation so many who have come before us have dreamed of. My hope is that this book can play some small role in helping us get there.
RD Moore