The whole project of social democracy, the whole project of the historical United States, the reason it rose to become a superpower, is to enable coordination at scale that transcends ethnonational bases for statehood. 1/

The divisions in the United States reflect elite manipulations, not ancient hatreds. We have only recently become red vs blue. Ohio was not part of the confederacy, but it is now. 2/

This was an active result of the pathologies of out political system. That it rewarded a "Southern strategy" that was about reconstituting Confederate dysfunction. 3/

The 2025 electorate is much more ethnonationally riven, much more divided, than the 2005 electorate. That is the work of politics on the public, not the work of the public on politics. 4/

The whole art is to build and sustain democratic institutions that match the nation to the state, rather than build ethnostates to match a nation. 5/

It's easy to be pessimistic at the moment, but for the bulk of America's history — and in its reflection, much of Europe's postwar history — has been success. 6/

We have plenty of reason to think a thriving multiconfessional polity is possible, as long as exaggerated material class divisions are not permitted to emerge. 7/

Once they do, of course, the work of the rich is to gin up interconfessional (racial/religious/ethnic/political party) division, to neutralize the possibility a democratic polity will insist no groups transition from luxury to domination of and disconnection from the polity by virtue of wealth. /fin