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Immediately after Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 felony counts of fraud in New York,  Pulitzer prize winning historian, Jon Meacham, commented: “Trump is no longer on trial. The country is. This is a test of mature citizenship.”

A few days after I heard his comment I was behind a van in traffic with a bumper sticker that read, “No mandated vaccines.”

I wondered what message the woman driver intended people to get, that her child shouldn’t be forced to have a measles vaccine, or polio, whooping cough, or any communicable diseases that once killed thousands of children until vaccines were developed?

Perhaps it was an old sticker she put on during the Covid pandemic. If so, she must not have known there never were any government mandated Covid vaccines. Some companies and agencies had them, but there was no government mandate for the general population.

I thought about what Meacham said and wondered if she thinks her attitude is an example of mature citizenship.

When I saw her bumper sticker the protest phrase, “don’t tread on me,” came to mind, a statement declaring individual rights above the common good.

Was that her underlying message? If so, how, exactly, does that show mature citizenship?

I wonder if the woman has ever stopped to ask herself what the government is supposed to do when its first responsibility is to protect its citizens and their security and well-being is under threat?

It doesn’t have to be the threat of war. To protect its people, the government cannot ignore any threat, can it, and do its job?

Don’t vaccines meet that criteria? Doesn’t mature citizenship mean supporting the government’s efforts to balance individual freedom and rights with the common good when the public’s safety is at risk?

Apparently for some, the answer is NO. Some Americans believe individual rights trump the collective good, no matter what. I wonder if they would argue that their attitude reflects mature citizenship? What, I wonder, do they expect the government to do?

It is a balancing act, for sure. Can the government do it perfectly? Of course not. Can it be done better? Of course. But does it always have to be done? Absolutely!

And you would think any mature citizen would know that.

But we’re living in a time of grievance politics, and the government is the perfect patsy to blame when you believe no government is the best government.

From that perspective the government can’t do anything right. Such things as taxes are considered a socialistic scheme to re-distribute wealth and gun regulations are viewed as the government’s way of keeping the population under control.

What is more, states rights are thought to be a way to protect individual rights against federal domination.

In an age of grievance politics, the survival of the fittest socially, economically, and racially is the only measure of success. Ethical matters such as justice and equality are to be left to individual discretion.

Grievance politics doesn’t even register on the scale of mature citizenship because its sole focus is the elimination of restrictions on individual rights.

In such a political environment, mature citizenship is fighting for its life, and I think that’s what Jon Meacham was getting at.

Tearing things down has become easy. Conspiracy theories now abound because they make people believe they are victims of hidden powers over which they have no control.

In other words, while grievance politics wants individual rights to be the final word, the ultimate authority, it does nothing to nurture individual responsibility. Individual problems and frustrations are always someone else’s fault, never the results of decisions the individual has made.

Complicating this already complex mess we’re in is the fact that grievance politics and culture wars are two forces working together.

On one level this coalition makes no sense. Grievance politics wants to get rid of government interference with individual rights while culture war advocates want the government to curtail individual rights.

But what keeps them working together is the fact that the people whose rights culture war advocates want to limit (or take away altogether) are the same people grievance politics has made the enemy – gays, lesbians, transgenders, immigrants, racial minorities, the poor, and, of course, women who don’t want to be told what they can and cannot do with their own bodies.

Instead of “the friend of my enemy is my friend,” this strange coalition reflects “the enemy of my friend is my enemy” perception of reality.

What Jon Meacham suggests is that we need to look beyond a bumper sticker slogan to see the underlying challenge we are facing to our national identity. In so many ways we are at a point in our history where almost nothing surprises us anymore, nothing seems out of bounds.

So we have a convicted felon as one of the two presidential candidates as if that is normal. I think Meacham’s description of where we are leaves little doubt that he doesn’t think it is, but come November we’ll find out whether or not a majority of Americans agree.

At the very least, though, Trump’s personal woes and political influence have combined to turn a national election into a de facto trial of the country, the outcome of which will reveal to the world just how mature the citizenship of the majority of adult Americans actually is.

I believe we’re up to the challenge, but I can’t stop thinking about that bumper sticker on the van and wondering how many other people have the same one on their vehicle or one similar to it and are planning to vote because they do.