David Brooks -One Nation Slight Divisible

David Brooks began his essay “One Nation, Slightly Divisible” by dividing America

into two sections: “Red America”, the republicans, and “Blue America”, the democrats.

Brooks discussed the differences between the two groups. He described how “Red

America” was made up of farmers and rural communities, while “Blue America”

consisted of big cities with many stores and businesses. As Brooks looked at the red and

blue sections of the electoral map, he was interested in the reasons behind the voting

patterns. He chose two cities to represent these two sections: Franklin County in

Pennsylvania for “Red America”, and Montgomery County in Maryland for “Blue

America”. He lived in Montgomery county and spent time talking with different people

in Franklin county. Brooks began to look deeper at the reasons for the differences

between the two groups and wondered if America was really a united nation anymore.

The first reason that Brooke considered was economics. He examined his theory that

the rich and the poor have separated. The blue states had higher incomes, higher end

stores, and jobs. Brooks asked people if they agreed that money was what had divided

the U.S. Although most people greed with that statement, most did not consider

themselves the people with less, and it was the ones with less that seemed more content

with what they had. As he spent more and more time with the people, he found that it was

really not money that split the nation. .

The next idea he had was religion. He found that the percentage of people involved in

religion was higher in red states. There were more churches in Franklin, and more

people attended a weekly religious service. Even with these statistics, Brooks again found

it was not religion. He found there were still ”bad people” and problems in both cities.

Yes there were differences, but the differences didn’t seem to be enough to