America Is Coming Apart

[babylonsister]

https://politicalwire.com/2020/12/18/america-is-coming-apart/

America Is Coming Apart
December 18, 2020 at 10:50 pm EST By Taegan Goddard

Derek Thompson: “People ask me if I’m optimistic about 2021, and the answer is that, in a way, I’m ecstatically optimistic. The economy will reopen, and life will reopen. People will come out of their homes; they will send their kids to school; they will hug and kiss and live. But underneath the high tide of economic growth and social normalization, I think we’ll feel something else, an eerie undertow of isolation and anxiety.”

“The definition of community is ‘where you keep showing up,’” said someone I met, whose name I’ve forgotten, back in the days when it was normal to meet new people whose names you could forget. I haven’t forgotten that line, though: Community is where you keep showing up. What a lovely idea. But where do people keep showing up, these days? Nowhere. Not the office, not the COVID-aerosolized bars and gyms. A lot of people have spent a year finding community via a glowing screen in a room they never leave.”

“The empty bowling alleys and movie theaters; the infinity buffet of entertainment and partisan media; the dissolution of a shared American reality—these are distinct yet connected phenomena. Digital technology has spawned a choose-your-own-adventure mediascape, which has flooded the electorate with alternate realities, at the same time that its community ties wither. America is coming apart, and these pieces will not be easily reassembled.”

[Irish_Dem]

1. What will it be like when we start venturing out of our homes?

It will be like surveying the landscape after a bomb has been dropped.

[JHB]

2. The mediascape was a problem long before digital technology

The problem isn't so much the technology as it is the fact that only one side is exploiting it and has spent several decades catering to an audience.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

10. Another problem is consolidation ...

There are fewer owners of more media 'consumed' by the public. This is the result of rubber-stamping mergers and acquisitions without regard to the effect on competition.

[StClone]

3. "A choose-your-own-adventure mediascape..."

Geez does this hit home. At work I often have to yell and repeat instructions to workers as they surreptitiously have earbuds blasting them into a different world of God knows what. Even though, I understand some may be listening to college class podcasts. Many are utterly removed from the day-to-day worldly experience I am in even as we stand next to each other.

[intrepidity]

4. The dog park nt

[appalachiablue]

5. It's not just about events, it's a process we're in.

[roamer65]

6. I expect an economic boom in about 1-2 years.

Cheap money and pent up demand. A lot like the Roaring Twenties that followed the Great Flu Pandemic.

[ansible]

8. I expect events that will make the Great Depression look like a walk in the park

The world is getting worse

[roamer65]

9. It will go one way or the other.

I don’t see any middle ground.

Remember where the Roaring Twenties went...BUST.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Link to the complete Atlantic article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/how-2020-shattered-shared-reality/617398/

[liberalla]

11. Bookmarked

[Hortensis]

12. I think societal traumas are normal for the human race, and

as those go this has been absolutely nothing. Certainly nothing compared to what many are going through right now in far less resilient nations.

Look at Venezuela, not long ago a reasonably advanced nation with a large middle class. Now Venezuelans who shared our comfort and security are living with pandemic raging on top of a collapsed healthcare system, money worth almost nothing, most good jobs gone, soaring prices for those drugs available (suffering and death for those who can't get them), constant struggles to get food, water and power that may or may not run, streets too dangerous to be out on, police too dangerous to call, crisis accelerating government progression from failed socialist nation to police state.

Traumas have plus sides for those spoiled by imagining "it couldn't happen here." Making the dangerously complacent people we've become, both voters and others who don't bother to vote or vote dangerously foolishly, just a bit wiser and more resilient is a good thing. Maybe some will save a bit more against the day -- when they're in a position to once again.

Btw, that big architectural landmark on the upper left used to be a modern shopping mall in Caracas. Now it's a notorious hell for political and other prisoners.



All in all, I'm feeling pretty good at how we've come through all this -- so far -- and the resilience it's proven of our institutions. I don't hear anyone whining about being broken in real life, just when I read how bad we have it and how hard it will be to recover, if at all. Nonsense. And I speak from generations of experiences of others.