Let’s do something different with a “think piece” this week.
What we’re going to do is watch a short video and then, hopefully, GetReligion readers can leave a few comments about what they saw or, more importantly, what they didn’t see.
The video itself comes from those savvy urbanites at the must-follow website/Substack feed called The Free Press. What’s going on in this light-hearted, chatty, laugh-to-keep-from-crying offering? The goal was summed up in this epic double-decker headline:
Pork Chops! Politics! The Free Press Goes to the Iowa State Fair. …
Brooklynite Ben Kawaller dives headfirst into livestock, fried food, and the great political divide at America’s annual country circus.
Kawaller states, right up front, that he knows a lot more about musical theater than he does agrarian life (and, needless to say, hip eateries in and around Park Slope don’t serve deep-friend Oreos). So why would he want to spend a week hobnobbing with Iowa farmers?
Read the headline again.
We’re talking politics and the Iowa primaries, of course. Thus, Kawaller offered this online confessional:
Along with showcasing some of the state’s most impressive agriculture, the fair has, since the 1970s, become a de rigueur campaign stop for political candidates. Over the course of this year’s fair, which runs until Sunday, August 20, no fewer than sixteen presidential hopefuls have appeared or are expected to. My visit coincided with some big ones: Florida governor Ron DeSantis was there on Saturday, only to be upstaged by Donald Trump, who also may have arranged for the flight of an aerial banner urging “Be likable, Ron!” (You have to hand it to him: the man knows how to taunt.)
I was able to snag a few hard-hitting minutes with Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson. Iowa also offered this Brooklyn-born Democrat the chance to interact with one of the most exotic species of all: the Republican voter.
So, folks, what do we know about Iowa voters, when it comes to sure-fire Republican primary voters?
Can you say, “White evangelicals”? I knew you could. That includes those Christian Reformed Church people who were not crazy about Trump in 2016.
Thus, it’s terribly important that this Free Press video include a few comments, wise-cracks and serious questions about faith, morality and cultural issues. Right?
This is an important subject, since we are talking about a nation that’s divided just about 50-50 and the times are only growing more tense. Thus, Kawaller writes:
Ten years ago, I would have thought nothing of writing off half the country as ignorant, or stupid, or deplorable — and may have been happy to treat them as such. But these days, when I think of the divide between red and blue, rural and urban, I feel more curiosity than disdain. And the idea of going to war (what else do we mean by “national divorce”?) with any of the people I spoke to — many of whom, Trump voters or not, did not fall neatly into any ideological camp — felt so very wrong.
Let’s see, that’s “read and blue,” “rural and urban: and, what else?
What was in the haunting opening paragraphs of the must-read David French tome, “Divided We Fall”? I summed it up this way in my recent Religion & Liberty essay, “The Evolving Religion of Journalism.”
The bottom line: Americans are divided by their choices in news and popular culture, choosing to live in protective silos of digital content. America remains the developing world’s most religious nation, yet its secularized elites occupy one set of zip codes, while most religious believers live in another. These armies share no common standards about “facts,” “accuracy,” or “fairness.”
“It’s time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed,” wrote French. At this moment, “there is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart.”
Watch the video. What did you see? What did you NOT see?
Remember, the goal is to take America’s “political temperature.” I realize that this video is largely a joke, but what part of the Iowa drama is totally missing here? What are the fresh insights here?