The United Altered States

“The United States of America” has always been a misnomer. “States of America,” yes. “United?” Well…

In the sense that we’re all stuck together, that seems to be the case. We are united in the same way that Murtaugh was united with that bomb-rigged toilet in Lethal Weapon 2­—if we separate, it seems, things explode.

We’re united by the Interstate, and that’s an impressive thing. But united in cause and creed and a shared sense of direction for the nation’s forward aim? Not once since the very start, when we shook off the bonds of Britannia­—and even then, there were dissenters. We’ve been in disagreement since T-minus several years.

After 1776, the closest America has ever come to being truly united was probably the first moon landing. It certainly wasn’t any of the occasions in which America was attacked or otherwise besieged by some offshore entity. Fear can make you huddle close, but it also gets you flexing, ready to swing at the first guy who looks at you funny­—inevitably, a neighbor.

We’ve been swinging at each other since before the nation was born, only able to tolerate each other by the space we have to spread out. As with unhappy housemates, the situation is manageable, if you have a big enough house.

But first, a beverage.

There is not a nation on this planet in which the residents don’t drink alcohol. Oh, there are the places where you’re not supposed to­—but when did a little thing like the law of the land ever stop somebody from doing what they please? Not even the penalty of death can prohibit a good time.

Even Antarctica, a wasteland non-nation with a non-permanent population hovering in the low thousands, has enough booze flowing through it to make alcoholism a legitimate problem. Where man walks, the drink follows, from the dense-packed urban capitals to the very ends of the earth.

When the US tried to shut things down during the first Roaring Twenties, when the Drys got their momentum, the “problem” of alcohol grew worse than ever, aided by bootleggers and our partners to the north. Everywhere, everyone resisted in their own ways. Cities had speakeasies; the country had moonshiners. In this regard, at least, we all shared the same spirit­—literally. Whether screaming down the backroads with a haul of illicit hooch or huddling over that same illegal beverage at a bar with a secret entrance, the thinking was, “To hell with the bastards­—if you want the drink, come take it.”

But things we do in tandem aren’t necessarily done in harmony, especially not today, in bloodthirsty, fearful times. Now, as ever, the nation feels divided­—rural vs. urban, city vs. country, religious vs. godless, and all those things connote.

According to a relatively recent census, 97% of the country’s land mass is what you would call “rural,” referring to a big place with few people. (“Wide open spaces,” in Dixie Chicks parlance.) Despite this overwhelming advantage in land mass, only around 19% of the country lives in what you would actually call “the country.” The other three percent of our landmass, the smog-choked urban trashscape, hosts a stunning 80 percent of the people, all stacked up and smushed together, convinced they’re having fun. A solid 2.6% of those people, including this author, live in New York City­—1 of every 38 people in the nation. And what do those people have in common with the other 37? Well­—it seems like we’re all drinking as hard as we can.

Drinking, for many, is a reasonable response to simple stress from being overworked, underpaid, harried, and afraid. This we have in common, as a new American birthright. In demanding times, we drink to up our bravery and better handle the pain of life’s incidental injuries. In dark times, we drink with anger, feeling sad and soul-sick.

But like regional snacks and sodas, the flavor of our fears depends on where you’re pulling up a seat. (New York Tex-Mex: no—New York bagel: yes.) In the country that I come from, the big things we fear and die from are tornadoes, heart disease, and getting kicked by a horse. In the city, it’s getting shot, robbed, or pushed in front of a train­—sometimes two at once.

In the country, the land of family values, there’s a trope that people drink because we hate our wives or husbands, wishing for some company not so contemptibly familiar. In the lands of urban loneliness, we hear and touch and breathe each other in, experiencing company without connection as a lonely one in the millions. Closed off from one another, we spend our days pretending that our seatmates don’t exist. We drink to break the barriers, and if that fails, we sit alone and drink and hate ourselves.

It’s not all fear and loathing, though. In or out of the city limits, we drink to enhance the good times and get the party started; whether it’s a 30-rack of six-point on a tall cliff by a lake or a round of Nutcrackers passed around the beach at Coney Island, we drink for fun, and to beat the lack of it. Upstate, we tailgate Bills games in any temperature, no matter the win-loss record; in the city, we lobby the government to keep the dream of to-go cocktails alive.

The agony and the ecstasy­—beer goes good with all of it. But though we all may drink with gusto, it’s hard to imagine us all getting together for a beer summit anytime soon. Despite being in this together, we increasingly do not trust each other, at rates that seem disastrous, or at least certainly herald a big disaster yet to come. Supposedly united, we are coming untied.

What to do?

On or right beneath the surface of their psyches, people seem to want to see a second Civil War. The sense is that a great violent upheaval could be clarifying, settling scores, or at least resetting them. In my opinion, this is the unstudied stance of real dunces—there’s nothing constructive about a bar brawl. But how else do we settle the big questions of our era, stoked on by the rulers who want neither side to win?

The rulers stoke the lie that our differences have grown to a place beyond conciliation, and many people believe this and take that lie to heart. But the truth is, we aren’t that different, in the deep cores of our being, where the alcohol metabolizes into a sweet embrace. Some country people like Broadway, and some city people fish. Everywhere you can imagine, there’s someone just like you.

As a transplant and a traveler who has logged some decent miles across these United States, I have cultivated the opinion that we have more in common than not; at the end of all our days, we’re all just trying to get home. Whether among the cattle or on crowded city streets, we suffer the same sunrises­—the same moon circles us all.

This is not to say that we don’t have real points of disagreement. We do­—but the extent of those disagreements has been greatly exaggerated. We’ve had a Civil War before, and what we’re in now ain’t it. And yet persists the warlike rhetoric; in extreme cases, we’ve come to talk about each other almost as though we’re separate species. But nothing blurs lines like alcohol­—on that, we can all agree.

Another point to agree upon is that things don’t need to be as bad as they are. Many of our differences feel more bred than born. They’re kept that way through long division, not mathematical, but generational­—a grand national brainwash from a thousand different vectors by a thousand different actors to try and get us thinking that the people we don’t act like, we shouldn’t like at all. But we drink for the same reasons. Our enemies aren’t each other­—it’s the bastards in charge, from the President and his cronies to the ones who corrupted the dream­—the people who program the politics, shadowy in nature, whose names none of us get to know.

They keep us separated in the certainty of knowledge that the more we cling together, the more fucked they’ll end up being; imagine 300 million people, with 300 million bats, waiting in the parking lot, with vengeance in their hearts. That’s why the news will tell you that the other guy’s the problem; that’s why every election feels like dancing on the knife’s edge at the end of all creation. It’s not because it’s real. Red, blue, rural, urban­—isn’t it all just ZIP codes and disagreements mostly petty?

This ecosystem of conflict is a false one­—despite what the news would have you think, we’re not actually out to eat each other, like predators and prey. According to Matt Taibbi, the corporate-captured media is financed largely, if not solely, for the sake of making you feel that way, like your greatest enemies are just miles down the road. It’s kept that way in part because a true United States would be a thing too powerful to sanction, too beautiful to bear.

The only way out of this is to reject modernity, reject tradition, reject all of the programming­—in other words, be a real drunkard and go with your damn beer gut. Stand with a stance of suspicion toward the info that gets beamed to you, paranoid and typo-ridden, always subject to change. Question why you know the things you’ve come to think are true.

Think of the things we fear together, the looming wolves that drive us towards that nihilistic drink. Financial precarity and lack of work, especially of the sort that nourishes the spirit and fulfills the soul’s karmic mission. Medical bankruptcy, or the fear of it, imposed upon us by a corrupt and criminal system. The things that kill our loved ones with diseases of despair.

These are hard times, no doubt, for most of us. They seem apt to get harder. Is distrust so unnatural for the ceaselessly exploited? In such an anxious atmosphere, ways out do not announce themselves­—better to find ourselves in a bottle than get hopelessly lost in the woods. But maybe that’s how we get out of this thing­—at the end of a pint glass, together.

Drink up and embrace the notion that change comes from within, not in the heart of one great man but in us all collectively. Drink up among the strangers in an act of radical trust. Drink up and to each other, from the A Train to the Great Plains and the lands beyond and between.

Grace repaves the road by which we’ll find faith in each other, and only with each other will we claw our way out of this jam. To put a spin on the classic maxim: Hard times create drunkards. Drunkards create good times. Good times create drunkards, too. And that’s how hard times end. –Sarah Szabo