E Pluribus Unum -- You Do the Math

Lots of creative political head-counting from Illinois state senator Barack Obama, the unelected Al Sharpton and U.S. senator John Edwards. In the wake of their cumulative discourse, one might beg pause to ask: so exactly how many Americas are there?

For Obama, there is only one, no matter what deceptive images of multiplicity and social atomization malice has cast upon the walls of our republican cave to confuse and divide us. For Sharpton, on the other hand, many Americas not only are real, they are persistent in grievance and endlessly unsatisfiable claims of reparation. Finally, in the precise analytics of litigator John Edwards, there are exactly two Americas, the perpetually pitched antipathy of the haves and the have-nots -- even if Edwards' own life and achievements are warrant that the antipathy is neither that perpetual nor all that strenuously pitched.