This essay is a Cover Story selection, a weekly feature highlighting the top picks from the editors of America Media.
As our divided country was preparing for a tense election on Tuesday, Nov. 5, I went looking for American unity. Where I live, in Pittsburgh, we have a good example of apolitical convergence in nearby Punxsutawney, Pa., in the form of a spring ritual where a groundhog announces, in “groundhogese,” how much longer winter will last.
With Pennsylvania widely considered the most crucial of the seven 2024 swing states (the others being Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin) and America feeling stuck in a winter of discord haunted by the specter of political violence, I decided to report on the election—the choice between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald J. Trump—and the state of the country, from Punxsutawney. In 2020, for this magazine, I drove through five swing states in five days and discovered that support for Joe Biden, especially among left-wing college students, was higher than I expected. In 2024, unity, and the threat of disunity, has felt like the pressing issue.
Punxsutawney is a town of 5,600 people located an hour and a half northeast of Pittsburgh in the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, still a land of Amish horse carts, coal mines and Steelers flags. The town was founded in 1850 on land occupied by the Lenape tribe. Timber operations and coal mining fueled its growth. In 1887, a group of German immigrants wanting to recreate a tradition of rural Germany associated with a Christian holiday—Candlemas, the 40th day of Christmas—went hunting for a badger. They settled for a groundhog, and a tradition was born. Other towns have similar celebrations, but none as famous as Punxsutawney’s.
That tradition is commemorated in the classic 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,”starring Bill Murray, which has become treasured by serious thinkers as an allegory for the pursuit of virtue. Its story feels relevant to the 2024 election and the Trump era in other ways. Mr. Murray plays Phil Connors, an urbane weatherman who despises the “hicks” of small-town America. He can’t wait to get home to Pittsburgh and move on with his career. And what does a third Donald Trump candidacy feel like if not an endless time loop? But more about that in a minute.
What Still Unites Us?
Like other western Pennsylvania industrial towns, Punxsutawney has struggled to find its footing in the last half-century, losing jobs and population, which was once around 10,000. Young people are leaving. The coal industry has shriveled. The median household income is now around $40,000 a year, below the U.S. median of around $75,000 a year. It’s the kind of Rust Belt place that has backed President Trump, with 68 percent of its population supporting him in 2020, versus 31 percent for Joe Biden. But the town is also constantly evolving. In 2020, despite threats of violence, it held racial justice marches as part of the Black Lives Matter protests.
As in the rest of the United States, people squabble daily about national politics. On my first trip, one of the first things I saw was a massive banner hanging from the side of a used book store. It said: TRUMPSUTAWNEY. GIVE ME FREEDOM OR GIVE ME DEATH.
“Oh, that? I don’t like it, but we can’t take it down, it’s private property,” said Rich Alexander, the town’s 77-year-old Republican mayor, when I asked him about the sign. “And I don’t really like him,” Mr. Alexander said, referring to Mr. Trump. “The exception was when he got shot because that was the only time he showed humility, but then he started opening his mouth again.” Mr. Alexander bemoaned the country’s “lack of decency.” He added, “I’ve never voted straight ticket in my life.”
On one trip, I visited both major political party headquarters to ask party leaders and campaign volunteers what they thought they still had in common with people on the other side. “Less and less. It’s a crisis,” said LuAnn Grube, president of the Jefferson County Republicans. “I have a good friend now who refuses to talk to me.” Still, she added, her side really needed to win this election. “A lot needs to happen to get our quality of life back,” she said. “That’s critical.”
I looked around the room and invited other local Republicans to join in about what still unites Americans. What about the Oscars? I asked. Nope. Taylor Swift? People laughed. The N.B.A.? Nope. The N.F.L.? “Well, no, because of the players kneeling,” said Ms. Grube. “But maybe that’s changed.” She looked around the room. People nodded. Football is still a religion in western Pennsylvania.
Down the street, at the Democratic Party headquarters, John Huot, chair of the Jefferson County Democrats, said that what Americans still agreed on was “that people should have good jobs and good communities. The question is how do you get there.” As Mr. Huot walked me out the door of the headquarters, a woman driving by honked her horn, stuck a fist out the window and yelled: “Trump!”
So this is not a rose-colored, glass-half-full account of a small American town. There is real tension in Punxsutawney. At a recent Catholic Mass he attended, said Mr. Huot, the priest asked somebody in the pews to remove a loud Trump shirt.
America, like any Sunday Mass congregation, is made up of people who are unlike one another. Our country is like every human society, except—because of our story of European colonization, African enslavement and modern immigration—more fractured, more racially diverse and more extreme in cultural differences. An Amish farm is not a San Francisco gay bar is not a Polish Catholic church in Chicago.
“Division—the possibility that it might all go to pieces—is a hidden thread throughout our entire history,” wrote Richard Kreitner in his 2020 book Break It Up, “from the colonial era to the early republic and the Civil War and beyond, through the fabled American Century and up to our own volatile moment.”
Modern polarization has been exacerbated by the two-party system. Belonging to one of the two main political parties is part of a person’s identity. It’s human nature to pick a side—and an enemy. “People are nice here, until you start talking about politics,” said a man at the Punxsutawney Democratic Party headquarters, who would give his name only as Barry. Everybody I talked to said they struggled to discuss politics. “They told us when we were young never to talk religion or politics,” said Doug Blose, a Republican school board member. “But maybe if we had learned how to do that, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
The mess, as 2024 election day approached, was a state of tension bad enough that Matthew Triponey, editor of The Punxsutawney Spirit, the local paper, declined to share any observations about politics or the town’s economy. He is tired of angry phone calls whenever he or the paper sticks its neck out on important issues.
Winter in America
There is one topic that Mr. Blose, Mr. Triponey and everybody else in Punxsutawney are happy to discuss. That is, of course, the critter that town elders in top hats pull from a log every Feb. 2 to ask about the end of winter. A group of handlers in top hats known as the Inner Circle listen to the animal and “translate” what he’s saying for the other humans. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees his shadow, America is in for six more weeks of winter.
The event draws 40,000 tourists a year, making it an important source of tourism, and revenue, for the town. There are statues of groundhogs scattered throughout the streets. There’s an actual groundhog in a cage attached to the municipal building that houses the police, fire department, library and mayor’s office. “The groundhog is a good metaphor for America, because it symbolizes hope,” said Nancy Anthony, who curates the Punxsutawney Historical and Genealogical Museum. “And it’s a good metaphor for this town, because it feels like the same day every day here,” said another curator, Laura Taladay, referring to the town’s sleepiness.
Except on Groundhog Day, when nobody is a Republican or Democrat. Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, appeared at Groundhog Day in 2024 and was welcomed by the town’s leaders and the organizers of the celebration, all Republicans. “Punxsutawney is the center of the universe right now,” Mr. Shapiro said.
It’s moments like that that make unity feel possible and fuel its myth. Uniting the original 13 states was considered an achievement worthy of putting the word United in the name of the country itself. Lincoln fought a Civil War to unite America. In 2004, in the Democratic National Convention speech that would propel him to the presidency, Barack Obama thundered, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America.”
Myths are hard to give up. According to the legend of Punxsutawney, its groundhog is in fact 138 years old, thanks to a magic elixir that extends its life every year. On Sept. 14 this year, in a ceremony, Punxsutawney Phil took six sips of the elixir. I asked Mr. Alexander, the town’s Republican mayor, for comment on the groundhog’s longevity. “Let’s just say that the average lifespan of a groundhog is five to seven years,” he said.
In both America and the church, the challenge is to abandon the myth that unity means constant harmony and agreement, and to embrace the reality of living with people who are different. But unity does mean, as shown by the good Samaritan in the Gospel, that it is important to love people who are not like us, even when it is inconvenient.
In many ways, this becomes easier on a smaller scale, as we get to know our neighbors. The Catholic principle of subsidiarity allows and encourages us to work out our problems on the local level. The challenge in modern politics is that the decline of local newspapers and other forms of local storytelling has combined with an explosion of online media that purports to connect the entire country but often simply alienates us from one another.
Like other local newspapers all over the United States, The Punxsutawney Spirit is a shadow of its former self. Americans end up arguing about Mr. Trump because that is what they see presented as “news” on their phones every day and because they often don’t get sufficient context for local issues from their local news sources. Many of us don’t see local journalism being practiced every day in our backyards, or local reporters displaying journalistic principles.
The split between national and local narratives played out dramatically in September. In another Rust Belt town, Springfield, Ohio, an influx of immigrants needed to fill jobs at a factory has further exposed a national divide over immigration. Mr. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have claimed that the immigrants have overwhelmed the town, even eating people’s pets. “In Springfield, Ohio, they’re eating the dogs,” Mr. Trump thundered during the presidential debate on Sept. 10.
The last allegation was disproven. It turned out that Anna Kilgore, a woman who had filed a police report about a missing cat and was one of the sources of the Trump-Vance claim, had apologized to her Haitian neighbors after the cat was found in her basement. We treat each other better, face to face, at the local level.
The irony is that immigration is helpful in places with declining populations, like Springfield and Punxsutawney, which has not had a big influx of immigrants. Death threats against local institutions in Springfield prompted Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, to criticize national politicians.
“When a federal politician has the stage, and they don’t take the opportunity to build up the community, instead of inadvertently not understanding what their words are, what they’re going to do to the community, it can really hurt the community like it’s hurting ours,” he said. “We’ve been punched in a way we should not have been punched.”
Put in theological terms, “the thing that unites people is the very local,” said Jason King, a theologian and director of the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Tex. “When we get very local, that’s where the connections are. The youth soccer. Wherever two or three are gathered in my name.” As Mr. Blose, the Republican school board member in Punxsutawney put it, “if you want to fix family, fix yourselves, and if you want to fix your country, fix your community.”
It will never be perfect. Unity, rather than a destination, “is a journey,” said Pope Francis in a 2016 speech. “Unity as a journey requires patient waiting, tenaciousness, effort and commitment. It does not annul conflicts and does not cancel out disagreement; on the contrary, at times it can mean exposure to the risk of new misunderstandings.” Or as William Portier, a theology professor at the University of Dayton, put it to me, “Unity is not about us all being the same, because we’re clearly not.”
That’s the message of “Groundhog Day,” which portrays Punxsutawney but was shot in Woodstock, Ill., because producers thought it looked more like a classic American small town. Phil Connors, the weatherman played by Bill Murray, gets stuck living the same day over and over. He finds redemption and escapes the time loop only when he perfects his heart through daily acts of kindness.
“The movie is a return to classical virtue,” said Michael Foley, a professor of patristics at Baylor University who has lectured about the film. “It’s a return to a Christian Aristotelian tradition. What is the good life? It’s not manipulation. It’s not political activism. It’s cultivating the soul.” It is only when Phil “authentically embraces virtue for its own sake” that he is redeemed.
Dr. Foley pointed to a scene where Phil encounters a young couple getting married. Their ideal honeymoon is a trip to the monster-truck rally in Pittsburgh. That’s not what he would want. But it is what they want. So he gets them tickets to the rally. In a second plotline filled with meaning, Phil tries to save a homeless man who keeps dying. “He’s developed a genuine compassion for the man,” said Dr. Foley. But “his growth is realizing he can’t save the old man.”
A More Complicated Reality
There is an America that cannot be saved. Between World War II, which ended in 1945, and Sept. 11, 2001, the United States was uniquely positioned to feel united. The rest of the world lay in ruins in the late 1940s and ’50s, while the United States was intact and its economy primed for a boom. We had an enemy in the Soviet Union. There was farmland to build suburbs in, and a baby boom to sell houses for. Technology had not yet made it possible for Americans to sort themselves into likeminded camps. If we wanted to see people, we had to physically go to the store or church or another place filled with people unlike us.
To escape the time loop, we need to grieve this America and accept a more complicated reality. Christianity, as a wise priest told me a long time ago, is the anti-tragic religion. Humans do not need to go around in circles making the same mistake over and over again. Eventually, there will be an election without a Trump, Clinton or Biden. We will get a chance to do things differently. We can hope for resurrection.
On my first trip to Punxsutawney, I met 22-year-old Carter Kuntz. He was volunteering at the local used bookstore that day. We got coffee at McDonald’s, ordered through a touchscreen. For Mr. Kuntz, how to define himself as an American is difficult. His grandfather was killed fighting in the Vietnam War, so he is much more cynical about the military than older men in his family are. His town is much poorer than it was in the 1960s and ’70s.
We all have different things that make us feel American. I grew up in Europe during the Cold War and can get weepy thinking about great American journalism and the might of the First Amendment. Mr. Kuntz’s generation, which grew up in a world with far fewer daily newspapers, has a different assessment of America than I do at the age of 47. Only 42 percent of Americans under 50 say it is still possible to achieve the American dream, compared with 65 percent of Americans over 50, according to a 2024 Pew Research study. One of the most striking divisions, according to the Pew study, concerns Americans’ attitudes toward the military. Americans under 30 were the only group with a more negative view of the military: 53 percent of this group had a negative view, and only 43 percent had a positive view. By comparison, 70 percent of Americans over 50 had a positive view, and only 26 percent had a negative view.
There is a new generation that will have to figure out what it means to be American. They will include people like Mr. Kuntz, who grew up in a poor place where the notion of an American dream is laughable to a lot of people. “The poverty around here makes people more cynical and more pessimistic,” Mr. Kuntz told me over coffee. “What made me less patriotic growing up was that my grandfather was killed in Vietnam.” He plans to leave town when he graduates from college next year from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Another young person who left is 25-year-old Chris Dyson, who organized the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. “There wasn’t much opportunity for me there,” said Mr. Dyson, who is Black and now lives in Philadelphia. “But there is a sense of community in Punxsutawney that’s not as easy to find where I live now.”
For young people, the world is changing quickly. For some, politics don’t feel as weighty as they do for adults. When Mr. Trump won in 2016, Mr. Kuntz recalled, “kids in high school were singing the Canadian national anthem.” I asked him if he thought there might be a violent reaction this year if Mr. Trump loses. “Maybe in the South, people might get physically pissed, but here people just talk about it,” he said.
Americans are not going to unite over politics any time soon, if ever. They will keep shouting at one another as long as there is a United States. One Democratic donor I talked to said the key to winning elections was finding the things that broad swaths of Americans agree on, and building a campaign around those, while making an enemy out of the minority who disagree.
Public opinion experts say that surveys reveal a large number of topics Americans do agree on. “People are frustrated about the name-calling, even if they laugh when their team is doing it,” said Meg Bostrom, founder of Topos, a public opinion polling firm. She listed other things Americans agree on: “The cost of housing, corporate monopolies, elites have too much power. Americans are united in their distrust of banks. According to Pew, only 38 percent of both Republicans and Democrats view banks positively. Americans are united in their attitudes toward small businesses: 88 percent of Democrats and 87 percent of Republicans have a positive view of small businesses.
One of “Groundhog Day”’s deepest messages, said Michael Foley, the Baylor theologian, is that Phil Connors “realizes that there’s no such thing as political utopia.” There’s a city of man “and a city of God,” said Dr. Foley. “The city of man is never going to be perfect.”
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Publish date : 2024-10-08 03:56:00
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