I am starting to think that maybe, just maybe, there is a lack of shared experience in this country that has caused us to become polarized based on our bubbles of interaction. Which COVID sure hasn’t helped with, but it was there before. /1 of n

It’s interesting that the same regionalism that led to the Civil War has become cyber-regionalism, where we occupy different meme spaces and hear echoes of our selected tribe only to the point where when we see the other side’s memescape, it’s like they’re from a different planet

Whereas the Great Depression and World War II were great national shared experiences, COVID is 10^7 bubbles of ideological and regional and religious and racial division. But we were falling apart before, because fairness in media has been choked to death.

As divided and flawed as we were as a nation 50 years ago, we were much tighter then because we were a smaller nation connected by shared media, shared national narrative, and shared ideas (or delusions) of what we were. But we also had stronger regional identities.

We don’t even have regional identities anymore. We have urban/rural divides, an/fm, subreddit and Facebook algorithm and Twitter feed divides, and have culture that has fragmented with no attachment to place or neighbors.

I don’t see how we fix this. Cable TV and talk radio and memelords have fractured dialogues into monologues fired off past each other.

I shared a military experience with what is a small fraction of the US population, and even that community is divided based on a lack of shared values and lessons.

To use a Star Trek metaphor, we used to want to be the Federation, but we act like the Klingons