between a violent nation and chaos
Mark Ames разродился очень хорошей статьёй. В ней есть чрезвычайно важная цитата из(?) книги Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver:

"In a sense, both the new left and the new right are the spawn of the Negro revolution. A broad national consensus was developed over the civil rights struggle, and it had the sophistication and morality to repudiate the right wing. This consensus, which stands between a violent nation and chaos, is America’s most precious possession. But there are those who despise it.

The task which the new right has feverishly undertaken is to erode and break up this consensus, something that is a distinct possibility since the precise issues and conditions which gave birth to the consensus no longer exist."

Это нужно понять. Единственная "сила", объединяющая США -- инерция борьбы за освобождение. Америка должна бороться за права и свободы геев, арабов, россиян -- кого угодно, потому что это та черепаха, на которой стоят слон с ослом. Но эта борьба не идёт ни в какое сравнение с борьбой за отмену рабства, и Америка обречена. Unless it reinvents itself, which it hopefully does.