Think Things Look Bad in This Country Right Now? We’ve Been Here Before, Jon Meacham Says - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."

By Tina Jordan, New York Times

May 18, 2018

CONTINENTAL DIVIDE As discord and bickering roil the country, Americans clearly want to read about what’s going on: Five of the top 10 books on the nonfiction list address our current political climate in some way. Jon Meacham — whose “The Soul of America” debuts at No. 1 — points out that we’ve been here before. “Political strife and division, particularly of the poisonous variety, are in some ways the rule in American life rather than the exception,” he says.

Jon Meacham image from article

Despite the current atmosphere, Meacham, a journalist and presidential historian, remains optimistic. “If history is any guide — and, however imperfect, it’s the only guide we have — then the right number of Americans at the right time will decide to heed what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’ and realize that we’ve been happiest and strongest in the hours when we have most generously interpreted the Jeffersonian assertion that we’re all created equal,” he says. “This isn’t sentimental or hokey: It’s the fact of the matter of the American experience. I’m not saying, ‘Relax, everything will be fine.’ My argument is ‘Let’s get to work and perhaps we will survive as we’ve survived before.’”

His book is a call to action. “Let’s learn the lessons of the past: Resist tribalism, deploy reason and remember that fair play for others is the best way to ensure fair play for you. If we can do that, then we’ll rise above the corrosive tweets, the presidential bullying and the narcissism of our reality-TV president,” he says. “It feels dark and insuperable, but it’s felt that way before.”