![]() ![]() Many of us have no doubt replaced that missing sense of community with the easy satisfactions of partisan loyalty. We interact less often with our neighbors. We live farther from close relatives and adult children. We have smaller circles of actual friends. As sociologists have been noting for decades, Americans belong to fewer civic, social and labor organizations than their parents and grandparents did. We rarely encounter, much less befriend, someone unlike us.Ī possibly stronger factor is the current epidemic of loneliness. So does America’s increased self-segregation: We tend to live in neighborhoods that reflect not just our ethnicity and income, but also our politics. How did we get here? Social and broadcast media, greedy for clicks and ratings, have much to do with the pandemic of polarization. Things like equality, education, foreign policy, public health, voting rights, even the debt limit. Americans are full of passionate intensity about issues on which, only a few years ago, we mostly agreed. That’s from Yeats’ famous poem, “The Second Coming.” (It can be found online at /45vpjvh2.) He wrote it shortly after World War I ended and just before the war for Irish independence began - a moment when the world was awash in grievance and incivility.Ī bit like now. We seem to have reached the point where, as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote in 1919: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” The next day, an angry Texas motorist plowed through a crowd in front of an immigrant center, killing eight more. A white supremacist last week shot eight people to death in a Texas mall. Our urge to vent is killing us, literally. Violent threats are surging against judges, public health officials, school board members and almost involved in a hot-button political issue. Capitol Police report that death threats against Members of Congress have increased tenfold since 2016, with no sign of slowing. No wonder we sometimes hurl unkind words at each other, and so what? After a few heated public meetings in the Berkshires and elsewhere, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled a few weeks ago that rude remarks at such events are in fact legal and must be allowed.įair enough, but anger can sometimes get the best of us. A 2022 Pew survey found that growing majorities of Republicans and Democrats consider members of the other party to be “close-minded,” “dishonest,” “immoral,” “unintelligent” and “lazy.” Radio and TV talk shows throb with partisan outrage. Thanksgiving dinners and other family gatherings have become conversational minefields. ![]()
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