On American Crucible

I, uh, love this book. It is a synthetic work on 20th century American history in which Gary Gerstle argues that the American nationality was defined above all by what Gerstle terms “the Rooseveltian nation.” The Rooseveltian nation, most importantly, was defined by a sense of civic nationalism, where all Americans could ascend, take equal part, and enjoy some level of economic egalitarianism. However, the “all” so critical to civic nationalism was muted by racial nationalist influences. “All” instead referred explicitly to white Americans (who, in the 1920s, excluded southern and eastern Europeans from their ranks, although they would be part of the body by the 1940s).

The American state was built with this sense of American identity in mind, and the American state-nation combination was fundamentally influenced by war. Throughout the 20th century, the growth of the American state happened largely in times of war—the Spanish-American War (and the Philippines War), World War I, World War II, and Korea to some extent. Although the New Deal occurred outside of war, it was bolstered and solidified by the coming of the Second World War.

The Rooseveltian nation began to unravel in the 1940s, when the nascent Civil Rights Movement challenged the racial nationalist aspect of it (while leaving its civic nationalism intact). However, in the wake of failures within the Civil Rights Movement and the assassination of MLK by a white supremacist—both indicators of the staying power of racial nationalism—many black Americans sought to position themselves outside of the American nation, and the sense of the fallibility of the American nation spread throughout much of the population in the wake of the Vietnam War. By the 1970s, the Rooseveltian nation was dead. However, many Americans, both on left and right, attempted to forge a new sense of American identity, both heavily influenced by civic nationalism. Liberals opted to turn increasingly towards multiculturalism, while the right turned to a religious, universalist (although hostile to African Americans) sense of civic nationalism. These two senses of American identity ultimately produced the culture wars.

By the end of the 1990s, it appeared that liberals had won the culture wars. Bill Clinton was a soft multiculturalist, as was George W. Bush. I was actually impressed on how well-depicted George Bush is here. While criticized for his failings with the Iraq War and the 2008 Global Financial Collapse, he is very much depicted as being part of the liberal, multiculturalist tradition (although that religious sort of civic nationalism is also there). Finally, in 2008, Obama was elected to the presidency, and to Gerstle, Obama was the civic nationalist par excellence who also represented the multiculturalist strain in American history. However, shortly after his election, racial resentment exploded, much as in the 1960s, and racial resentment was undoubtedly the key factor in the production of Donald Trump as American president.

Whither America? Nobody really knows, and Gerstle doesn’t pretend to know, but it gives me a lot to chew on.

The most important thing in this text is Gerstle’s conceptualization of America as the “Rooseveltian nation” (named after Teddy Roosevelt, but reaching its climax under Franklin), and I found that conceptualization of the United States to be utterly convincing. Highest recommendation.