When Pennsylvania decides, America decides
When Pennsylvania decides, America decides
The Keystone State of Pennsylvania, where two Americas meet, will determine who wins.
Once again, battle is joined in Pennsylvania. Historians will know that it was the “high water mark of the Confederacy”, Gettysburg, after which the American Civil War began to turn decisively against the South.
As “America decides”, it looks once again as though two sets of competing US ideals will clash and one forced into retreat that will continue to echo. Pennsylvania is the swing state that will decide the US election.
To go to the site of the 1863 battle - now a national park - is to feel, as one often does at such places, a feeling that something so awful has happened that it has seared the very soil. It hangs dead-handed over the Pennsylvanian countryside and, at spots like Pickett’s Charge, gives an immediate and horrifying insight into what it must have been to cover a distance of open ground into the teeth of cannon fire. “Nothing but glory gained”. America divided and to its own detriment and the glory is as elusive now as it was then.
But the Keystone State, an emblem borrowed by Pittsburgh-based Heinz, exemplifies where two Americas meet in more ways than one.
It is the state of the “Deer Hunter” (the Clairton locations also spanned West Virginia and Ohio), forest and factories and a white-tailed buck slung over the hood. Pittsburgh – the “steel city” blue collared and truck-driving.
It is the state capital, Harrisburg, small town and yesteryear, it is Betsy Ross and the first Stars and Stripes and a state of families who drive on over to watch Penn State, the Nittany Lions, touch down in their 105,000 seater stadium. “We ARE Penn State!”. College football and Sunday brunch.
And it is also founding America; Philadelphia, one-time capital of the nation, home to lawyers and the cracked antique of the Liberty Bell. To Rocky Balboa and his art museum steps, the City of Brotherly Love and deep urban decay.
All things American in a single state. Yesterday and today. Blue-collared defiance meets Benjamin Franklin, legal eagles and two-sides of the track towns, north meets south.
It is right then that when Pennsylvania decides, America decides.