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Or is it somewhere in between: countless shades

of gray — infinite competing and overlapping

visions of America, including many from those

whose stories have been muzzled for a long time.

The hard times that have befallen this nation in

2020 — a deadly pandemic, millions unemployed,

political warfare, the upheaval after George Floyd’s

death — have revealed an increasingly evident

truth: The storylines that have long held the nation

together are coming apart.

“The United States is essentially a collage

culture. And if you were a certain group, you

had the comfort of the solidity of the great

American story. It had a coherence,” says Robert

Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for

Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse

University. “And it’s now been broken apart into

a million little pieces.”

Since its inception, a nation lacking an existing

shared culture instead built its identity on a series of

stories. Exceptionalism. Life, liberty and the pursuit

of happiness. Equality. Manifest Destiny — the God-

given right to expand. The American dream.

“We didn’t have an ancient homeland. We had

nothing. So … you needed a story. People need

stories of belonging,” says Colin Woodard, author

of the new book “Union: The Struggle to Forge

the Story of United States Nationhood.”

Such stories emerged in the generation after the

founding fathers died, and they grew with the

nation, becoming more powerful even as they

excluded many who populated American life.

It was, in fact, a clash between storylines — the

fundamentally different visions the North and

South had for the country — that precipitated

the Civil War.

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