Harold Wilson once declared that the Labour party ‘is a moral crusade or it is nothing’, a proposition whose logical consequence is troubling. Returning now from the United States, the comparable proposition both haunts and comforts me, because America is not nothing.
Travelling through several Midwest and western states, I’ve been struck by how many Americas there are even in one region, how different they are and how, like the individual wooden staves of a great barrel, they depend upon the metal hoops that bind them. If the hoop stays strong, tight and in place, the construction is formidable. Loosen that steel belt, and the staves fall into a useless clutter.
The central hoop of the American barrel is, I think, the moral idea of America. Dislodge the idea, and the rest will not hold. America is a moral idea or it is nothing.
I travelled by train, the California Zephyr, which runs from Chicago to San Francisco, a two-day, 2,438-mile journey. I joined in Denver, Colorado. From brown plains to snowy peaks, our track left the skyscrapers of Denver and climbed over the Rocky Mountains. We passed the ski slopes, then clattered down the gorges of the Colorado River. In the twilight now, we gathered speed through immense red and yellow deserts, approached the Great Salt Lake, then squealed to a stop before midnight in Salt Lake City, Utah.
But that’s the geography. How about the people? As diverse. Denver’s seem young and techie. The scent of marijuana is on the breeze and the coffee is good. There’s money and new business here, small city apartments are priced in millions and I shopped for swimming trunks in an outdoor store that felt as big and high as Kensington Olympia, crowded with sporty people kitting themselves out for snow, mountain and river – and I felt very old.
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