A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand –
“We came out here to find the American Dream, and now that we’re right in the vortex you want to quit … You must realize that we’ve found the main nerve.”
I know,” he said. “That’s what gives me the Fear.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
“By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
It is important to acknowledge that it’s late in the game for what I’m about to say. It’s like about three minutes left in the fourth quarter and the United States is getting creamed by China with very little hope of a last minute touchdown to save the Empire.
Hunter S. Thompson already declared the death of the American Dream 40 years ago. But the concept came to a sputtering reemergence in the 1990s with Democrats in the White House and the promise of a computer revolution. It died again in the deserts of Iraq after 9-11. But the first African American president breathed new life into the dream with a sliver of hope in 2008. It was not to last.
Along came this mango-colored madman named Donald Trump, a ratfucking narcissist with a huge personal debt owed to Russia’s Vlademir Putin. To call Trump a conman, a scam artist or a scandal monger are all drastic understatements, and even the Democrats and the daily press — as much as they hate Trump and have done everything they can think of to bring him down — seem far too weak to accomplish saving America from the destruction he has already wrought and what is yet to come.
Only the American people can save us now, and that will mean a feat of massive voter turnout never before seen in the history of the United States. Half the people in this country have been so apathetic for so long that it’s hard to imagine waking them up. If the coronavirus doesn’t do it, all hope is lost.
I was planning on reconstructing the history of the slogan “United We Stand, Divided We Fall” today, but that seems hopelessly inadequate for the task at hand.
Trump has fucked us all in the ass so hard and deep now that it will be nearly impossible to ever recover physically or psychologically. This is the worst sort of gang rape and mass propaganda sodomy to ever occur in our history, and there are still a third of the people who keep begging, no screaming, for more!
The Black Lives Matter protests, which have died down now, looked like a seminal moment when people were waking up to injustice and ready and willing to take to the streets for their lives. But unless the presidential election on November 3 is a massive landslide against Trump, the streets are going to explode and obliterate any hope of even a shard of happiness on Thanksgiving or Christmas.
That’s on top of the massive numbers of deaths we are going to see this winter from COVID-19 after various experiments in reopening schools, attempting to bring back competitive sports, and other ill-conceived attempts to reopen sectors of the economy.
The only thing that could have saved us was real leadership in Washington back in March and closing the entire country down for a few weeks. We could have prevented the massive spread into every corner of the nation with strict social distancing rules, mandatory mask requirements, and iron-clad stay at home orders. Yes, it would have temporarily collapsed the economy, but it could be back up and running by now.
But noooo! Trump had to have his way and deny the existence of a crisis, worried it would hurt his reelection chances and the booming economy he claimed all the credit for.
Even the staid New York Times acknowledges that the election season is not likely to be pretty, although they understate the massive unrest that is sure to follow a stolen election by Trump.
The Voting Will End Nov. 3. The Legal Battle Probably Won’t.
The real story on what’s actually going on was just published in Hunter Thompson’s old magazine, Rolling Stone.
Anthropologist Wade Davis lays out the case for how COVID-19 signals the end of the American epoch in world history, and he appears to be right on.
“Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science. In a single season, civilization has been brought low by a microscopic parasite 10,000 times smaller than a grain of salt. COVID-19 attacks our physical bodies, but also the cultural foundations of our lives, the toolbox of community and connectivity that is for the human what claws and teeth represent to the tiger.”
Yes, pandemics and plagues have a way of shifting the course of history, and not always in a manner immediately evident to the survivors, he writes.
“In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism.”
Most politicians will react with denial at this analysis, even mainstream Democrats.
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
If I was asked to write the script for a Democrat like Joe Biden or Doug Jones on how to bring people together at this time to attempt to save us, there is one theme that must be addressed. That is the history of the concept and slogan of united we stand, divided we fall. It is absolutely true. Right now we are so divided we seem doomed to fail.
As I conducted research around this theme, I ran across a Pink Floyd song that seems apt.
“Together we stand, divided we fall.”
“United we stand, divided we fall” is a phrase used in many mottos to inspire unity and collaboration.
It contradicts the American notion of individualism and promotes a collectivist concept that lines up perfectly with the evolutionary theory of survival through altruism.
Related: Can Altruism Trump Selfishness to Save Democracy and Planet Earth?
Either we all work together, or we all fail.
The political leadership in the United States used this idea to bring the American people together to fight the German Nazi bastards in World War II, and it worked (see photo above).
The phrase itself traces its roots to the Greek storyteller Aesop in Aesop’s Fables, and the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica quotes Robert Grosseteste saying: “It is written that united we stand and divided we fall.”
Heck, it’s even in the Christian Bible. If it helps, the phrase “a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand,” is from Mark 3:25 in the New Testament. In Matthew 12:25: “And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” Luke 11:17: “But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.”
But it also appears on the great seal of the state of Kentucky, where protesters might want to point that out to Mitch McConnell in Louisville.
In U.S. history, the first attributed use in modern times is to Founding Father John Dickinson in his pre-Revolutionary War song “The Liberty Song,” first published on July 7, 1768 in both the Pennsylvania Journal and Pennsylvania Gazette newspapers. In the song Dickinson wrote: “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!”.
Patrick Henry used the phrase in his final public speech in March 1799. Clasping his hands and swaying unsteadily, Henry declaired, “United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.” At the end of his oration, Henry fell into the arms of bystanders and was carried, nearly lifeless, into a nearby tavern. Two months later he died.
During his unsuccessful campaign against Stephen Douglas in 1858, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech centered on the House divided analogy to illustrate the need for a universal decision on slavery across all states.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
It was true then. It is true now. A true leader would call upon this powerful slogan now and say:
“This has been true throughout history, and is more true today. To combat the coronavirus pandemic and get the economy going again, we need to come together like never before. We are therefore calling on all people of good will — Democrats, Republicans and independents — to join us in this altruistic campaign to bring people together to begin healing this state and nation.
“Together we stand, divided we fall.”
