Our Country Is Crumbling Because We’re No Longer United

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What, traditionally, made america nice? In fact, earlier than we reply that, we’ve to acknowledge that issues have by no means been good — not even shut. Our fantastic founding fathers who we admire a lot had been slaveholders. Europeans got here to the New World for freedom, after which slaughtered the natives and shipped over slaves from Africa. A lot for freedom, eh?

Even after we freed the slaves, they didn’t have full rights of others. Even immediately, Black persons are constantly, routinely handled worse resulting from frequent cultural prejudice. Others are handled unfairly as properly, largely others with darker pores and skin.

However after we look again at our “greatest” intervals, they’re instances when the nation was largely very united for various functions — to get freedom, to cease Nazi fascism and genocide, to carry higher base working circumstances and requirements to all People, to arrange social security nets like Social Safety and Medicare, to cease the Vietnam Battle, to launch a rocket ship into area and step on the moon, to cease acid rain and horrible air air pollution. People of all stripes and cultural persuasions got here collectively time and time once more to make the nation higher and to make the world higher.

These days, it looks like every part is a combat. Each subject is an enormous cultural and political combat. Everyone seems to be pissed and thinks “the others” are working to tear down our nation. Granted, that is largely brought on by political leaders who’ve taken this strategy to “winning” in politics — going all the way in which again to the late Nineteen Nineties. The thought of compromise is poisonous to many politicians now, and the followers they’ve influenced. It needs to be “winning,” and by no means compromising. The truth that about half of voters constantly vote for one occasion and about half constantly vote for the opposite occasion someway doesn’t lead many individuals to suppose, “Hey, how about we work together on what we can agree on, compromise, and move forward together?” That was the politics of a lot of the Nineteen Nineties, when the price range was final balanced, and People didn’t hate one another a lot.

It’s not simply politics, although. It’s additionally media. We used to have closely shared media, and so we walked round with related issues in our heads, and each information and leisure we may simply bond over. Democratization of media and splintering of media has led to much less and fewer of a shared expertise. However, after all, it goes far past that. Social media websites, which now dominate as a supply of reports and dialogue, encourage outrage. They characteristic “viral” posts that enrage, that thrill, that garner interplay/engagement and extra views. Individuals don’t get their info and concepts from conventional, shared sources that make certain to have 3 verified sources to run any story. They get their info from chronically on-line “superusers” on Fb, Instagram, TikTok, reddit, X, Bluesky, and quite a few different networks. They get posts tailor-made to “their group,” which is usually one thing detrimental in regards to the opposing group. It’s a social tragedy, and one which’s been supported and infrequently seeded by our adversaries, by opposing international locations that wish to see the US — and the entire democratic “West” — infighting and falling aside, somewhat than united.

Some individuals have been demonizing the United Nations for many years, however that was usually a distinct segment factor. Now it’s frequent to hate on the UN, the World Well being Group (WHO), and NATO, in addition to US companies meant to serve all People — the Division of Training, the Environmental Safety Company, the Division of Power, and many others.

It’s been really easy to get individuals preventing with their neighbors, hating their fellow People, seeing individuals with a special opinion on coverage issues as “the enemy within” and making them neglect that we’re higher collectively, stronger collectively, world leaders solely after we are united.

I don’t have an answer, sadly. There are some enjoyable, engaging concepts, however they aren’t real looking. There aren’t any indicators that something goes to vary with social media, politics, or our tradition to unite the nation once more.

In fact, China is united, and it’s shifting ahead quickly on the tech of the long run. Europe will not be residing a fairytale, however it might probably unite round crucial issues a lot better than the US can anymore, so it’s prone to preserve shifting sooner than the US in key areas. Our former pals are uniting over their want to guard themselves from an antagonistic, abusive, harmful US and thus their want to go away the US behind or on the skin. Naturally, shedding the alliances, partnerships, and openness we had with so many international locations hurts us once more. We’re much less united internally, and we’re additionally much less united with neighbors and former pals and companions.

We have gotten increasingly more remoted on the similar time that we’re turning into increasingly more self-destructive. It’s arduous to see how this might finish properly. We’re simply the most recent empire to crumble, however that’s actually what we’re doing.