We are a nation of cannibals: What changed?

Political division is nothing new. We’ve been a divided nation since Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson began to bicker in George Washington’s cabinet meetings and planted the seeds of our first two political parties. Some political division is healthy in a Democratic Republic; it assures a platform for other ideas and keeps us from running off too far in one direction.

But something has changed.

Today, we’ve become a nation of cannibals as we continually eat our own. Yes, Republicans and Democrats are at each others’ throats as usual but the division has gone much deeper than that. Moderate Republicans are fighting with the Right, Democrats are tearing each other down over which person should be the nominee for president, conservative Christians and progressive Chrisitians have just about stopped coexisting. It’s becoming quite frightening to me. As a historian who attempts to see the big picture, I’m trying to look into the future to forseee how this will all play out. The only time I can recall our nation in this state of division would be the middle of the 19th century as we approached and fought the Civil War, and the Vietnam era. We got past those events and rebuilt a simblance of unity but, clearly, that unity was only skin deep. The virus of division has always been working just under the surface. Today, we are out of remission and in a full-blown outbreak of intollerance and hatred. It feels much different now because there are so many sub-battles occuring on different fronts. It’s no longer two-sided division, it’s like a Rubic’s Cube of vitriol being shot from a scatter gun.

What changed?

Obviously, Trump happened. I don’t think anyone on any point of the political spectrum could reasonably argue that our current president has done anything to unite us. That would be an absolutely absurd claim. Plainly put, the Trump presidency is itself absurd. How that happened will forever be mystery to a multitude of Americans. But it did, and here we are. It would be too simplistic to lay this mess all at the feet of The Donald, though. I believe that if it were all about Trump, I’d have a lot more hope that we could recover from this and start to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But I’m gravely concerned that things are shattered beyond reasonable repair.

What else has changed?

Sometimes we forget that our modern age of technology–internet–smart phones–24-hour news cycle–social media–is still very new. Although it feels like it’s been with us forever, it really hasn’t. Most of the people reading this right now came of age in a time when none of those things existed. When we had interactions with people, it was through face-to-face contact or over the phone. When you speak with someone face-to-face or over the phone, you tend to measure your words. There is no illusion of anonymity in a face-to-face encounter or a phone call. It’s easier to read the true meaning and intent in what is being said when you can see someone’s face or hear their voice. These kinds of encounters are much more rare in today’s world. That built-in layer of mutual respect can be easily stripped away when technology is the preferred mode of communication and it doesn’t take long for things to go south when that happens.

In our modern age, we get no relief from the news; it’s in our faces 24/7. When I was growing up, we had a small handful of news outlets which provided us with a nightly update, a once a day newspaper to let us know what happened the day before, and some magazines to provide us with more in-depth coverage of substantial stories. Today, we have wall-to-wall daily coverage everytime someone in Washington D.C. sneezes. And we have what I call “choose your own adventure news” where anyone can handpick which spin they want put on their stories so that they fall in line perfectly with their world view. Our entire media is now designed for us to be able to constantly nourish our own confirmation biases. To borrow a line from the great Paul Simon, so many people now only hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest. We are the first people in history to live in such a society so it is impossible to predict how this will all play out.

We have a real mess on our hands. Politics has infested every walk of our lives. Millions of people can’t even take refuge in their own churches anymore. Social media has torn down the veil of privacy to such a degree that we sit in the pews with one eye on the pastor and one eye on that person in the next row who shared that awful political meme on Facebook yesterday. Viral politics are coarsing through the veins of Christendom to the point where it has us questioning one another’s faith. The fact that there are Rebublicans and Democrats sitting in church services together is nothing new. We just didn’t used to think much of it.

What changed?

And as I said before, this isn’t just an issue between people of rival political parties. Like it is with Christians, people of the same party are now eating their own. There are huge factions within the Republican’s and the Democrats’ parties. We are seeing Dems tear eachother apart during this primary season. Feelings are being hurt and some people seem to be giving in to the temptation of going down with the ship for their personal favorite. In frightening echoes from the 2016 election, I am hearing many people say, “if _____________________ doesn’t get the nomination, I’m just not going to vote.” This self-destructive phenomenon is a big reason why Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office today (if he’s not golfing somewhere). We just don’t seem to learn from our mistakes. As a historian, I don’t know why this fact still seems so shocking to me, but I guess there are some things about the frailties of man that you just never get used to.

I can’t predict how this will turn out when the smoke clears, but I’m less than hopeful. I feel like Pandora’s Box has been opened. It’s going to take some sort of miracle to heal this.

I’ll leave you with this song I wrote and recorded about this. I hope you’ll enjoy it.