“It could be worse”

Kurt Andersen’s novel The Breakup is out today. I’ve been looking forward to it. 

Are we middle Tennesseans living in the future “Free American Republic,” the post-split remnant of Red State America Andersen imagines? He’s an astute observer of our fractured Fantasyland, I’m not betting against him. But if this is a cautionary tale, maybe national reconciliation is not yet entirely out of the question. That’s a much bigger gamble. Anyway, and to look on the slightly-brighter side, I’m sure he’s right: It could be worse. Still can be. For now, this is just a good story we should take seriously. Less “active contempt” for our neighbors would be a positive step away from the brink.

“…I so badly wanted the crazy experiment of the United States of America to continue defying the odds, as always. Anyhow, what I said earlier about the half-life of the war’s traumas is true. But what to me feels even better is the fading of what preceded it—the compulsive politicization of everything, the fear and hatred of the Other Side as an animating, irresistible everyday emotion. The active contempt has become less salient, diminished, including in rural Middle Tennessee, where I’ve lived for all but a few months for the last decade. “I don’t disagree about the vibe shift, honey,” says my local best friend Victoria, who grew up around here and lives fifteen minutes away. “But isn’t it also true for you right now because you don’t have Asher around to bicker with so much?” 

At first I found the term “Disunion” too clinical and wonky. But it is more correctly mutual than “secession.” And has some history, dignity, a touch of grandeur. I’m a fan of all those. But I call it the breakup. It’s a little glib, but simple, factual, neutral, idiomatic, and broad enough to cover the whole era, beginning to end. It’s also a universally familiar concept, unlike Disunion. It’s relatable. Americans have been strange bedfellows in a mixed marriage for a long time. We grew apart. We stayed together, but finally came to find each other impossible. We fought. We had irreconcilable differences. We finally split. In a world where half the marriages unravel or rot or die of thirst or blow up. Or do whatever mine’s doing. A clichéd question about America since I was a kid concerned our national political “fever,” if and when it would ever break. The fever broke. Along with our beautiful, uncomfortable, brittle, breakable antique national governing arrangements, now being rebuilt and refurbished. It could be worse.” — The Breakup: A Novel by Kurt Andersen