Just an American full of dread over here

[Lencoboy]

My husband and I talk a lot about the lack of cohesion in society. I do agree there are still plenty of very good people doing good things, but there is a lost sense of commonality. We think about it a lot in terms of seemingly insignificant things like entertainment and pop culture. My husband and I grew up in different places and didn't meeting until college, but we have so many shared childhood memories because of watching the same TV shows and seeing the same commercials, etc. There was something importantly cohesive, I think, about everyone sitting down to watch prime time TV together or wait for the big season finale, or wait for the next album of a big band to come out. But, today entertainment is so individually curated that even a small group of friends often doesn't watch the same shows or listen to the same music, and even if they do, they don't watch it at the same time, etc... It's very disjointing!

And I think this spills into politics. We lack a common goal or interest as a society. Of course, there was always disagreement and dislike and distrust of political opponents, but there was a least some sense that we were in it together. I think that's mostly gone now.

Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but I have a theory that the end of the Cold War was the beginning of the end for America. A country like America that's so enormous and so diverse in people and beliefs and cultures and interests and that is designed as a federalist system needs some kind of overwhelming existential enemy to bind its people together and the Soviet Union was the perfect thing.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, our leaders have been scrambling to find a replacement and each iteration becomes more and more internally focused and damaging. First was "Radical Islam," which was mostly outward focused, but still brought the search for enemies home with things like the Patriot Act. When that fear faded, the next big enemy was immigration, which drew the focus even more inward facing because so many Americans are immigrants or have family who are immigrants. Then, over time as race relations got worse and worse and then finally culminating during Covid, the two sides really solidified the idea that our biggest existential threat comes from within - the other side.

So, no longer was it that Democrats and Republicans could work together to make American a better place. Now, the other side isn't merely a political opponent with different ideas on how to make the country better - they are evil and a threat to the your very existence. So there is no compromise, because to compromise would be to conspire with the enemy. And, I think we're past the point where a new threat of some kind would rally us together. I think if something like 9/11 happened today you wouldn't see the same cohesion as we saw in 2001 because Americans don't trust each other anymore, which is quite disconcerting!

I definitely relate to a lot of what you're saying.

I also believe that we were bombarded with 'too much information' during the decade of the 2000s and also much of the 2010s in particular, which I think eventually led to a lot of political, social and cultural 'fatigue' where society on both sides of the Atlantic just struggled to keep up with everything, and in a nutshell, became 'a bit too big for its own boots', which I believe in turn led to a lot of apathy, indifference, and people just living in their own little worlds, which I guess is also one of the main 'downsides' of the Internet.

Had 9/11 happened now in 2024 instead of 2001 I reckon both the national and international reactions would be totally beyond the pale and probably wouldn't bear thinking about.

Internet/social media blackout and blame gaming galore among politicians the world over would be a dead cert for starters.

[ErinKC]

I definitely relate to a lot of what you're saying.

I also believe that we were bombarded with 'too much information' during the decade of the 2000s and also much of the 2010s in particular, which I think eventually led to a lot of political, social and cultural 'fatigue' where society on both sides of the Atlantic just struggled to keep up with everything, and in a nutshell, became 'a bit too big for its own boots', which I believe in turn led to a lot of apathy, indifference, and people just living in their own little worlds, which I guess is also one of the main 'downsides' of the Internet.

Agree. I hate to feel this way because I feel like every generation says the same thing, but I have a 9 year old and I often feel sad about the world she's growing up in.