A divided America

David Brooks makes an interesting point in his Thursday column, "The Elusive Altar," though I'm not sure he knows it.

Brooks uses his space to point out a downside to an earlier story from the week, about a study that shows more American women are living without husbands than with them. He highlights women from the lower rungs of American society who want to marry but cannot, and says that social ills, not female empowerment, have driven the marriage figure down.

It's not Brooks' position, however, that struck me, but the unsaid point that there's more than one America to look at these days.

Empowered, single women like me looked to the husband study and said, "Yes! We don't need them!" Brooks would argue that lower class women with children, perhaps living with the child's father, looked to the same study and sighed.

Meanwhile, we, a nation at war, resemble a nation of wealth. While high definition, flat panel televisions zoom off store shelves, a tiny portion of the country's families are sending their toughest sons and daughters to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. That small section of the country feels our victories and successes personally, while the rest of us sit back and discuss policy.

As oil prices go up and down -- but mostly up -- the nation's motorists and owners of homes with oil or gas heaters consider taking on second jobs. Oil executives, on the other hand, sit back and relax.

It seems we rarely are one "America" these days. Instead we are many Americas, all jockeying for position.

Perhaps we've never been a united front. But weren't we once better, at least, at pretending?