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E Pluribus Duo
This is a “hot take” from scanning my Facebook newsfeed: We are headed for serious meltdown nationally. I don’t know how this plays out but the nation is experiencing different realities. This isn’t the normal “everybody sees what they want to see” fracturing of reality. That is normal. It’s what fuels everyday life. What I am talking about is the aggregation of shared realities into roughly two different and conflicting camps. The type that sees one reality as “true” and the other as “false” with severe consequences for the triumph of one reality over the other.
For as long as polling has been around, it has been a technique for measuring how many contending realities there are and which realities were ascendant. “Push polling” was a technique developed to nudge realities in one direction or the other. Social media is a persistent and constant push poll for conflicting realities. Depending on which social media you choose and the “friends” you accept, that is the reality you will see and be “pushed” into. I happen to have a lot of “friends” on my Facebook account who are connected via a specific hobby. That hobby attracts people from across the political spectrum. So when they post or “share” political content rather than hobby content it reveals the chasm between the contending realities.
And they are getting sharper and more defined. E pluribus duo.
Published in General
Really? That time was worse? I wasn’t born until ’68, so that’s a sincere question. It was worse?
Fair point.
That’ll never happen.
Between the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and the assassinations or attempted assassinations of political leaders, it was worse in terms of random violence. While Antifa has shown a wider, long-term presence in certain U.S. cities like Portland, and you have more mayors and political leaders who are openly sympathetic towards them, the specter of 9/11 still keeps the random domestic terrorism of the late 1960s and early 70s down. The far left rioters of 2020 hew to areas where they know the pols are sympathetic, and don’t fare very well when they get outside their safe zones (see Antifa at the Stugis biker rally on Saturday for the latest example of that).
The media of 50 years ago wasn’t as nakedly partisan as the current major outlets, but you still saw lots of pieces that would condemn the bombing of an ROTC center or the U.S. Capitol, but then explain we had to understand the ‘root causes’ of those actions. Stuff like that continued right up to the very morning of 9/11, with The New York Times’ fawning profile of an unrepentant Bill Ayers. As of now, we still haven’t crossed that bridge yet, where unannounced violent actions like bombings resume, because the people carrying them out and their sympathizers think they can be justified to the American public (though whether or not that barrier can withstand another Trump win in the fall is open to question).
I think that we whom Jefferson rightly identified as one American people in the Declaration of Independence are now more properly thought of as two people. One American-loving, one America-hating.
But could we become two geographical polities? That’s a whole ‘nother thing. Even Ohio in its present boundaries couldn’t be a country, or part of a country, or part of a Federation, of the America-loving people. We in SWO are the same people as Northern KY and SE Indiana, and a different people from America-hating Cleveland and Columbus.
It is true that the America-loving people is divided culturally as you say. But I think we could still agree to consider ourselves a single people. The divide between Deists and orthodox Christians existed even in the People of the Declaration, and yet we functioned as a people in the war against inherited privilege, and then in creating a Union.
In some ways. We had the MLK and RFK assassinations, which were dramatic horrible events. We had the black riots in most cities that summer. I think that the suburban and rural population that year was much more traditional (or conservative if you like) than they are now. Rural people back then were not druggies, for example.
Yes, there were very real regional differences that are not nearly as pronounced now, especially in the southern cities that were still somewhat provincial. African Americans were the only significant voting minority and feminism was just getting to be a significant political force.
The sorting out of the left and right into the parties was also still a work in progress at the time, in that you still have liberals in the GOP and conservatives on the Democratic side. For the media, which still leaned Democratic back then, in meant you couldn’t simply demonize based on party affiliation, because that would come back to bite you in the next election.
And those riots transformed the American city, from one end of the country to the other. They were for the most part thriving, peaceful, multi-racial hubs of economic opportunity where people shopped, dined, worked, raised normal families, and entertained themselves, with decent schools.
They were turned by the Great Society/War on Poverty programs and the race riots and Black Power intimdation of black students into hopeless, crime-and-drug infested segregated slums inhabited by fatherless households of multi-generational poverty.
That would be nicer than the alternative: having no place to escape to.
I wouldn’t necessarily expect present state boundaries to hold if the country breaks/splinters – for the very reason you state.
Maybe – eventually. But getting there won’t be easy or painless.
The Civil War had very precise boundaries on what was and what wasn’t a slave state, with some of the border states being the ones that didn’t go with the Confederacy (or, in the case of West Virginia, split from the parts of the state where slaves were more in use). Looking at the Washington Post county-by-county map of the 2016 election results, I’m not sure how you go about dividing a ton of the country up, when you have Blue or Red dots and islands within other areas:
I’m not either. But if feel confident that should a split happen (and honestly, I’m hoping and praying one won’t – at least not anytime soon) it’ll eventually get figured out – and quite possible refigured and refigured and refigured and ……
On another note, I find that map both fascinating and scary.
Thanks to everyone who’ve taken the time to answer this question. If the country could bounce back from the ’60s and ’70s, maybe there’s hope that we can bounce back from the current situation as well. :)
I think a federal bailout of the Democrat run cities and states, not caused by the pandemic but being requested as part of this pandemic payout, that Pelosi and Schumer are pushing is exactly what will stop a correction from happening.
A knitting forum is now political.
Who knew knitting could get politicized.
Rodin – can you be more specific as to what you mean that American is heading for a meltdown? What is it on Facebook that’s so disturbing?
It is the public claims that people are willing to have their names associated with and expect social support for within their group. The nature of Facebook is that people feel free to post a lot of things and reveal what is driving their emotions at the moment. I use it one-dimensionally and have maybe posted 3 political pieces in 5 years. Even those were fairly guarded.
So when I see strong political posts full of anger at President Trump for something he did not do or say, I see people who will not need much to see the election (should President Trump be re-elected) as totally illegitimate. And they believe they have lots of social support in expressing their views.
I see others who are extremely fearful of what will happen in President Trump is not re-elected. I share those concerns but do not voice them on Facebook. And these voices are just as determined as the anti-Trumpers. As Scott Adams has noted, does anyone believe that if mail-in voting were to become the way all (or most) votes are tallied that the outcome is credible if your side lost? This is shaping up to be the most “illegitimate” election in history, even as it may the most important.
A current meme on Facebook is how President Trump is sabotaging the Post Office to win the election. (And that is being pushed by Nancy Pelosi directly.)
Facebook is but one window on the conflict in realities, but it also is the most publicly available to anyone.
Interesting. I’ve noticed this too. They are thinking their concerns are so widely shared that everyone must have them. Wow.
Duck. Duck. Go.
But just like polls, it only seems supported. Think of all the people who are not on FB or Twitter, who have the sense to be less forthcoming due to the current mob climate?
That’s what I’m hoping is true. :-)