INDIVISIBLE

Does the word indivisible mean anything to anyone reading this? Anyone?

I know that if you are a boomer, you probably said this word every day you went to school. The rest of you may or may not have. Either way, please read on.

Indivisible (adjective): Not divisible; not separable into parts; incapable of being divided.

Let’s say that last part out loud.

INCAPABLE OF BEING DIVIDED!!!!

When I started kindergarten in the 1960s, every morning began the same way. We stood up, faced the flag, put our hands over our hearts, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. We did it every day, from kindergarten through high school. Thirteen years… can you believe that? And I assume almost every other American kid at that time did as well.

I don’t think we gave it much thought as five-year-olds. But looking back, I think that word indivisible meant something, even if we didn’t fully understand it at the time. And I think it started right in our own neighborhoods.

Growing up, you had the kids on your block. You played together, fought together, gossiped about each other, busted each other’s chops, and did all the things kids do. Sometimes you couldn’t stand one another. But if somebody from the next neighborhood came looking for trouble, suddenly all those differences disappeared. You stuck up for your neighborhood.

Of course, the kids from the next neighborhood were your rivals. You might even have gotten into a fight with them. But if somebody from another part of town came after them, guess what? Now you were on the same side.

Then there was your school. You could hate the kid sitting next to you in math class, but let somebody from a rival school say something about your school, and suddenly you were best friends. You stuck up for your school no matter what.

The same thing happened with your town, your city, and eventually your state. We had our rivalries, our disagreements, and our differences, but there was always something bigger that brought us together.

And ultimately, that something was America.

It didn’t matter whether you were a Democrat or a Republican, rich or poor. Religion didn’t matter either. We could fight among ourselves, and God knows we did, but there was an understanding that no matter how much we disagreed, we were still on the same team.

One nation, indivisible.

I wonder how many people even think about what that means anymore.

Here we are in 2026, just days away from another election, and I am not sure we have ever been further from the meaning of that word in my lifetime.

I don’t even know how many schools still recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. And I wonder about a lot of the people now rising to political prominence, on both ends of the spectrum. Could they even recite the Pledge if somebody put them on the spot? Does the word indivisible mean anything to them at all? Because so many of them have built an entire career on the opposite idea, that the other half of the country is not a rival but an enemy. Somewhere along the way, disagreement became disloyalty. Political opponents became enemies. People stopped arguing about what was best for America and started arguing about which Americans were the problem. We have become a country where people seem more loyal to their political party, ideology, or movement than to the country itself. And that is the exact opposite of indivisible.

I know it was not always like this, because I watched it work. On the morning of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush was a president half the country had voted against. His approval sat at 51 percent. Within two weeks it hit 90 percent, the highest number Gallup has ever recorded for any president. Nobody jumped on board because they suddenly agreed with him about taxes or anything else. We were attacked, and for a little while we remembered we were one country. Indivisible, exactly the way the word is supposed to work.

Somewhere in between, it started to show. If you want to see the moment, go watch Saturday Night Live’s Election Night sketch from November 2016.

And then I watched it stop working. When COVID came, it was the same kind of thing. Something from outside, killing Americans of every description, no politics in it at all. And within about three weeks we had sorted ourselves into teams over it. Not over what to do, over whose side you were on. That was the moment I knew something had changed.

I am not suggesting we all have to agree. We never did. We fought in our neighborhoods, argued in our schools, and disagreed about politics around the dinner table. Sometimes those arguments got pretty heated. But disagreement was part of being American. It wasn’t a reason to stop being Americans together. Maybe I am looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. America certainly wasn’t one big happy family in the 1960s. We had racism, segregation, Vietnam, assassinations, riots, and plenty of hatred. But even with all of that, there was an ideal we were supposed to be working toward.

One nation.

Not two nations. Not a collection of political tribes. Not a country where half the population thinks the other half is evil.

One nation.

I am not sure how we get back there. I am not even sure we can. And that is what worries me most. Because when we taught generations of children to say the Pledge of Allegiance, we weren’t just asking them to pledge loyalty to a flag. We were trying to teach them that they belonged to something bigger than themselves. Something worth defending, even when we disagreed about what it should look like.

That seems gone. Is it for the better? I don’t know. It sure doesn’t feel that way. And although I have always thought of myself as a solution guy, I am not sure I see a big one here.

There is no Ronald Reagan riding in to unite the country, and no Tip O’Neill on the other side willing to fight him all day and then sit down to dinner with him and their wives that same night. I only see more division.

Here’s the thing, though. When you look at it from the inside out, this isn’t really a fight between the left and the right. It’s a fight between the loud ends and everybody in the middle, and the middle has lost its voice. The extremes are winning, and every day they win, that word indivisible gets a little more impossible.

So maybe the only answer left is a small one. In a few days you are going to vote, and then you’ll vote again after that, and again after that. There are people on those ballots, Democrats and Republicans both, who actually want to cross that divide and who have done it before. They are not the ones you see yelling on television, which is exactly why you have to go looking for them. Find them and vote for them, this time and every time after. Not because you hate one side or the other. Vote for them because they still believe the other side is American.

It isn’t much. It might not be enough. But it’s the only lever any of us actually has.

Otherwise, if history has taught us anything, division eventually leads to war, death, destruction and killing. And I guess that’s where humans too often wind up.

So much for indivisible.