I read this article today in the SF Chronicle. Robert Reich talks about the divisiveness in the country today; that we are all in our own political bubbles.
I thought again about how most Americans want the same things and are moderates, in general. However, with the advent of hundreds of cable channels, dozens of radio personalities, and endless niche sites and pages on the Internet, it is easy for anyone to enter an echo chamber of thoughts that match their own. Very little information from other sources makes it into the bubble.
Did American’s divisiveness start with proliferation and abundance of these echo chambers? As we observe Veteran’s Day today, my thoughts went to soldiers and wars. Didn’t Americans sacrifice *together* as part of the war effort in WWII ?
(I can’t recall anything like that in my lifetime — now at 48 years. I was born after the JFK assassination, too young to appreciate the deaths of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. I was too young to understand the situation in Vietnam. However, I was certainly old enough to appreciate the impact and implications of the attacks of 9/11/01. That national wounding could have been another point for our country to come together in some unifying way, but instead we were told to go shop, which is a relatively solo task.)
With the exception of weather-related disasters — which are mostly regional — I can’t recall any kind of national unifying call for sacrifice in my lifetime. Has the absence of national sacrifice allowed us to become more divided, where we just identify each other as Liberals and Conservatives; where we “unfriend” people on Facebook because they voted for the other candidate? It’s when we work together for a common cause that we appreciate each others’ humility and humanity, right?
What are your thoughts?
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/U-S-politics-most-polarized-in-recollection-4024223.php