By Frank F Islam & Ed Crego, October 3, 2024 (Image credits: Tom de Boor, DALL-E 3, Dreamstime)

Two roads diverge in America today And we cannot travel both

While some would decry the “politics of envy”, others would decry the “politics of inequality”

While some would call protecting those at risk “socialist”, others would call caring for those less fortunate “humanist”

While some would embrace “free market capitalism”, others would embrace “the democratic society”

While some would make government “the enemy of the people”, others would make government “the people’s ally”

While some would emphasize “class warfare”, others would emphasize “saving the middle class”

While some would see immigrants as “the root of all evil”, others would see immigrants as a “wellspring of American innovation”

While some would attack regulations as “unnecessary and restrictive”, others would defend them as “essential to fair enterprise”

While some would rebuke the free press as “a source of biased information” others would recognize it as the “last, best hope for truth”

While some would put their “trust in God”, others would put their “trust in good”

While some would address only the “financial deficit”, others would redress the “human deficit”

We wrote the “poem” above based upon Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” for a blog posted during the 2012 presidential election year.

Back then, we noted that in the last stanza of his work Frost asserts, “I took the road less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” We went on to opine:

Given the country’s current condition and the angst and anger emanating from those controlling the political debate, we can’t tell which road is “the one less traveled by.” We do know, however, that the citizenry is confronted by two very different visions of and roads into the future.

More importantly, we are certain that what is going on today is truly a struggle for the brain, and the heart, and the soul of America — the “road” that is chosen and “the road not taken” will make “all the difference” for the future of this great nation and its citizens.

One dozen years later in October 2024, no single road has been chosen. As a result, we are still in a struggle for the brain, heart, and soul of America

That struggle could very well end this presidential election year. If the wrong choice is made, it could be a fatal one for the future of this great nation, its citizens and our American democracy.

That’s not just our opinion, it is also the opinion of award-winning American filmmaker Ken Burns. Early in his undergraduate commencement address at Brandeis University on May 19, Burns said:

In January of 1838, shortly before his 29th birthday, a tall, thin lawyer (i.e., Abraham Lincoln) prone to bouts of debilitating depression addressed the young men’s lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?” He asked his audience, “Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the earth and crush us at a blow?” Then he answered his own question. “Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”

Later, Burns advised the graduates:

There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route … Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.

In 2024, we are indeed at a crossroad and if we take the wrong road, it will be impossible to turn back because, as Abraham Lincoln cautioned, we Americans will be the perpetrators of the demise of our democracy and the replacement of it with an autocracy.

There are some who believe that the source of that demise will primarily be voters living along or near roads in the rural areas across this country. We do not. There are many residing in those locations who are not dogmatic MAGA Trump supporters. They are reasonable, rational and persuadable.

As we observed in our September blog “Narrowing the Urban-Rural Divide”, a survey of rural voters in ten battleground states shows that “rural voters tend to be economic populists who would overwhelmingly support parts of the Democratic Party’s agenda — so long as the right messenger knocked on their doors.”

Issues the majority of the rural voters surveyed agreed upon included: women’s right to an abortion; raising of the minimum wage; the right to form a union, and making quality child care more affordable.

The survey disclosed that a large percentage of those contacted did not associate policies for those issues with Democrats and they had not been contacted by anyone in the Democratic party requesting their support.

Francis S. Barry, a Bloomberg opinion columnist and member of its editorial board covering national affairs, attests to the potential for finding common ground in his book Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey Into the Heart of American Democracy, released in June of this year.

Barry’s book is based upon the seven-month 10,000 mile transcontinental road trip using the Lincoln Highway and related points that he took with his wife Laurel in a Winnebago during the 2020 presidential campaign and its aftermath when Trump refused to concede.

In the prelude to his book, Barry writes:

Attempting to explain the American family is a doomed mission best left to novelists and poets. There is at least beauty in their failures.

My aim in writing this book is simpler to invite you along with Laurel and me on a cross country journey, in the hope that — by listening to people we meet along the way, digging into landscapes to uncover what it conceals, and remembering some of the domestic battles Americans have fought — we might view the country’s challenges a little less rigidly, our fellow citizens a little more empathetically, our common history a little more clearly, our national resilience a little more appreciatively, our common inheritance a little more reverently, and our civic responsibilities a little more soberly.

Barry’s road trip, which began in lower Manhattan, went to the west coast and back across the country, ending in Washington, DC, revealed the connections and values we share as citizens regardless of where we live. Near the end of his book, Barry writes:

The question facing us today is: Can we inspire a revival of that faith (in the trinity of freedom, democracy, and equality). The concept of a faith revival is deeply rooted in the American experience — periods of awakening that open eyes and hearts. A new spirit of revival is needed — not a Christian but civic, not exclusionary but pluralistic, not centered on celebrity showmanship but ordinary citizenship, not preaching righteousness but humility, not seeking miracle cures but everyday healing, and not speaking in tongues but debating in civil terms all the while propagating faith in the American trinity.

There are two roads diverging in America today.

One of those roads has four lanes: left, center left, center right, and right. That road brings citizens together to move forward to a garden in which democracy will grow.

The other road has one lane to the extreme right and another to the extreme left. It isolates citizens and moves them backward to a graveyard in which democracy will die.

The question becomes which road will we Americans decide to take. The road we take will make all the difference. (We will address the critical importance of finding that road and its center lane in more detail in our next blog.)