The Myth of a ‘United’ States

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

History shows that our country’s actually been divided from the start. If secession is in our DNA, what’s keeping us together? Should we just break up already? Kai talks with author Richard Kreitner about his book, “Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union.” Plus, a look at how the Internet and the “Filter Bubble” contribute to our isolation today. Stick around for an exercise you can do when the divide gets real at the Thanksgiving table. Companion listening for this episode: Can America Be Redeemed? (07/05/2021) Eddie Glaude and Imani Perry consider the question through the work of James Baldwin and Richard Wright. Plus: How our country could enter a period of “post-traumatic growth.” “The United States of Anxiety” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on WNYC.org/anxiety or tell your smart speakers to play WNYC. We want to hear from you! Connect with us on Twitter @WNYC using the hashtag #USofAnxiety or email us at anxiety@wnyc.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you think there's anything at all that all people in the United States have in common?
0:06.0	Self-determinism.
0:07.6	Every American I've met always wants to do things their way.
0:10.8	Do you feel any allegiance to where you live?
0:13.0	Well, I'm a native New Yorker.
0:14.0	It's just, you know, one of the most vibrant cities in the world, and my connection is definitely
0:18.4	with New York more than it is with the rest of the country.
0:21.8	And why do you think that is?
0:22.8	We just do things so differently here
0:24.6	than the rest of the country,
0:25.8	which is so much more trapped in more conservative ideas
0:29.7	and stuff.
0:30.2	I feel like there was kind of always a ingraingrain division, but especially after Trump got elected in 2016,
0:35.4	I feel like a lot of these ideologies that people harbored kind of just surfaced,
0:40.0	and then people started realizing how different we all are like politically and socially.
0:44.1	The division is very unhealthy and is sometimes even tempting to want to split up our country,
0:49.5	you know like let's division off Texas and let them do their thing because we're just not speaking a similar
0:54.2	language at all.
0:57.2	Welcome to the show, I'm Kywright and here's a number I am stuck on.
1:02.6	290, 510.
1:06.5	That is how many people voted for Joe Manchin
1:09.0	to be a senator, obviously all of them
	...

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