The Undoing of the United States part III

Some states will accept the positions of the Left, others of the Right, and yet others will struggle with some combination of both. In this way, the great divide in American life will be partially resolved in terms of regionalism. 

Given the democracy of town meetings in Vermont, my younger daughter and her two daughters see themselves primarily as Vermonters, not as citizens of the United States. To be an American and to be a citizen of the United States are not the same thing. Americans behave and think a certain way. They are casual and informal, speaking simply, even slouching or leaning against a door frame while conversing. Citizens believe they are the chosen ones and must defend their nation to the death.

My older daughter lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. She was born in New Mexico, grew up in New Hampshire, attended the University of Virginia, and stayed there. I do not know how she would tell her life story, but I know her two sons, one seventeen and the other twenty, would focus their stories on Charlottesville since their lives were intense with the national attention on the demand for the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee in a city park.

I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. New Mexico's second Spanish governor, Don Pedro de Peralta, founded a new city at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in 1607, which he called La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís, the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi. In 1610, he designated it as the capital of the province, making Santa Fe the oldest state capital in the United States.

We Santa Feans are ardent supporters of democracy and celebrate the Fourth of July with a pancake breakfast on the Plaza, where we hear speakers, some in English and some in Spanish, joke that when the Pilgrims landed on their rock, we New Mexicans were there to serve them tortillas and beans. Just as Cinco de Mayo means nothing in New England, Columbus Day, once a major holiday in New England, passed in New Mexico with a yawn.