Are We Really as Divided as We Think?

Part of a seven-part series exploring what 100+ independently written letters from America's business community reveal about the country and its people at 250.

By Sarah Bonk and Chip York

Spend enough time with the news and it's easy to conclude that Americans can't agree on anything. The divisions are real, and they dominate the national conversation.

But for the past several months, we've had an unusual view of the country. For America's 250th, we invited business leaders, chambers of commerce, and trade associations to write a Birthday Letter to America — a chance to remind people what still connects us at such a divided moment. No required message, no prescribed point of view.

What came back was hopeful, personal, and full of unexpected common ground.

No two letters sounded alike. People wrote about their grandparents, their employees, the towns they grew up in. Some reached back into history; others barely looked back at all. But the same ideas kept surfacing: community, opportunity, hard work, service, responsibility, showing up for one another.

Other Americans appear to see this too. In a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll conducted as the country approached its 250th, 74% said we have far more in common than what divides us — including 79% of Democrats and 76% of Republicans.

Our differences look smaller up close

Aaron Lieberman, executive director of America Outdoors Association, has spent much of his career on western rivers and in the backcountry. His organization represents river guides, cowboys, hunters, anglers, climbers, and small business owners working from the canyons of Appalachia to the Alaskan wilderness.

Their politics vary as much as their landscapes. Lieberman writes that his members cover the full political spectrum, and that at industry conferences you'll find people who vote in completely different directions — or don't vote at all — talking easily over a beer. He calls that the America we actually live in, and one worth celebrating.

“What divides us can feel enormous until you are standing beside someone watching the sunrise over a canyon. Perspective can shrink the distance. That is not only an image of recreation; it is democracy in profile."

Hunters and hikers can disagree about politics and still be moved by the same sunrise, care about the same river, and work side by side on the problems in front of them.

Different politics, same table

Good Business Colorado represents nearly 500 businesses across 32 counties. Executive Director Doni Clemons describes “tech founders and ranchers, restaurateurs and manufacturers, urban and rural members, people who vote differently from one another sitting at the same table.”

“What holds us together isn't ideology. It's a shared conviction that a business has obligations to its people, its community, and its place. The belief, that enterprise and conscience belong together, is about as American as it gets."

Clemons closes with this hopeful note: “People who haven't given up on shared effort are the best reason for optimism I know.”

Fireworks remind us that shared joy is still possible

Guy Occhiogrosso, president and CEO of the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce in Washington, acknowledges our shared frustration with national politics, exhaustion from division, and disappointment in institutions. But he argues we make a mistake when we let patriotism belong only to a party, a slogan, or the loudest voices.

"Patriotism… is a stubborn commitment to the people, places, and principles we are responsible for carrying forward… A patriotism that believes our country is more than its current political moment. A patriotism that believes our community is more than its worst day. A patriotism that understands freedom comes with responsibility, opportunity requires participation, and hope is not a feeling we wait for but a choice we practice."

His chamber coordinates Bellingham's Fourth of July fireworks each year, and he shares an image of thousands of people along the waterfront, in parks, on porches, and in parking lots, watching the same sky.

"For a few moments, we are reminded that connection is still possible. Shared joy is still possible. Community is still possible."

After the light fades, the work of solving tough problems remains. Occhiogrosso is honest that it's discouraging some days, but he leaves us with this:

"America is still worth believing in … not because it is perfect, not because its leaders always get it right, and not because we agree on everything. It is worth believing in because the work of making it better still belongs to us."

Common ground doesn't require unanimity

Nneka Chiazor leads the Public Affairs Council, an organization founded in 1954 after President Dwight D. Eisenhower convened a group of corporate executives and urged them to get more involved in their communities and in the political process. Seventy years later, her letter returns to that original premise.

She names the pressures honestly: declining trust in institutions, political differences that feel deeper than ever, the temptation to focus on what's pulling us apart. Then she offers a distinction that reframes the whole question.

"America's progress has never depended on unanimity. It has depended on participation."

For Chiazor, the through line is freedom. But she defines it in a way that makes room for disagreement rather than treating it as a problem to solve.

"Freedom to speak. Freedom to remain silent. Freedom to agree. Freedom to disagree. And, when necessary, the freedom to agree to disagree."

Her conclusion follows from there: the next chapter of the American story will be shaped not by unanimous agreement, but by the willingness of citizens to engage, participate, and contribute.

A country that looks different up close

None of this means America isn't divided. It means division isn't the whole story.

There's another America in these letters: a conference room where people who vote differently swap stories over a beer, a table in Colorado with ranchers and tech founders at it, a waterfront in Washington where thousands of people look up at the same sky. Or, as one letter put it: two people standing beside each other, watching the same sunrise over the same canyon.

Nothing in those scenes would make the news. That may be exactly why we keep missing them.

Sarah Bonk is a civic entrepreneur and the founder/CEO of Business for America. She spent over 20 years leading strategy, design, and organizational change at Apple and American Electric Power. Today, she works with business leaders to help fix what’s broken in American politics.

Chip York leads marketing and communications for Business for America, building coalitions across the business community. His 20+ years in global marketing and creative communications span agency leadership at Ketchum and in-house work at The Coca-Cola Company.