Two Americas

I first lived in the USA in 2013. I pretty much moved out in 2024, over a decade later.

It's clear from the outside that there are "2 Americas”. In 2016 I remember reading a lot of comments in the vein of “this isn’t us”— but it really was. Before moving the the USA, and growing up in a city that receives a lot of Americans from all walks of life, Donald Trump to me seemed quintessential American.

It wasn’t until I moved to Ithaca to study in the “Cornell bubble” that I was pleasantly surprised to more clearly discover “the other America”. I moved to New York, and kept seeing this other America, in what I’d call “the New York bubble”— Seattle, and the SF Bay Area too are proudly unique from other parts of the country, and they wear that distinction like a badge of honor. Moving across these cities in a way felt like moving from one bubble to the next.

They clearly felt like “bubbles” to me in large part because I left the USA to go back home for the holidays every year. And from not only outside, but afar, it’s easy to see the idiosyncrasies. It’s easy to see the ways in which SF is disconnected from the rest of the world, for better and for worse. It’s easy to see how local the mentality of not only this city, but every city, tends to be.

I see tweets like the above, and I think some people don’t realize the reason Donald Trump was in a position to take the Capitol in the first place. His campaign has really been a movement of the people— not “all people”, but a large number of people, rich and poor, far and wide, who needed a figure head not to receive orders from, but to be congregated in a single spot for.

If Donald Trump disappeared the problem would not be solved. I disagree with the rhetoric, this will probably not be the most important election in our lifetimes— the next one will be as important, and a few ones after that. Another Donald Trump would surface. It might take a few years, or they might be standing next in line already, but they exist a dime a dozen. It’s not that hard to tell masses of people what they’re already thinking.

The United States has always been a divided country. Its expansion in the 19th century was a carefully crafted balancing act to ensure “the slave-owning south" and “the emancipated north” always had the same amount of power, as 13 colonies became 20 and then 34. Policies were enacted and state lines were drawn to create this carefully balanced, two-power system, which can be directly traced to the current two-party system.

It’s no accident that the Republicans and Democrats are always so close in elections in spite of raw vote counts. The “south” needs the “north”, the “north” needs the “south”, and the politics were built to ensure, apparently in spite of raw voting numbers, both would always have equal power.

Sometimes they are very at odds. Other times they are much more reconciled. And the characters that stem from each— Donald Trump is but the latest in a long history of figureheads like him, empowered by just sharing the thoughts of the one half. I don’t know why he was allowed to run again, but I also don’t think that wouldn’t have changed the risk of something like the Jan 6 taking of the capitol from happening again.