This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We… - Gore Vidal

They already had contingency plans ready in case of terrorism, violence, whatever, which they had inherited from Clinton, who had put together some terrible legislation after Timothy McVeigh blew up the building in Oklahoma City.

The late Mr. [Carl] Sandburg was a public performer of the first rank ("Ker-oh-seen!" he crooned in one of the first TV pitches for the jet-engine — ole banjo on his knee, white hair mussed by the jet-stream), a poet of the second rank (who can ever forget that feline-footed fog?) and a biographer of awesome badness.

...American society, literary or lay, tends to be humorless. What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?