Tribalism accounts for much of the meanness of the moment.
...The underlying theme of all this meanness is intolerance.
My own better angel, currently on hiatus, tells me that the majority of people today aren't as awful as they appear on social media, which rewards hate at a high volume. But who, or what, rewards civility and nuance?
It may be, as the writer George Packer says, that the United States is headed for "a cold civil war that continues to erode democracy." No nation can survive for long without some self-evident truths as a lodestar.
There's an old saying, attributed to the Sioux: A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass. What may be worse are a people without a heart, unable to see half their countrymen and countrywomen as anything but the enemy. nyt
My own better angel, currently on hiatus, tells me that the majority of people today aren't as awful as they appear on social media, which rewards hate at a high volume. But who, or what, rewards civility and nuance?
It may be, as the writer George Packer says, that the United States is headed for "a cold civil war that continues to erode democracy." No nation can survive for long without some self-evident truths as a lodestar.
There's an old saying, attributed to the Sioux: A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass. What may be worse are a people without a heart, unable to see half their countrymen and countrywomen as anything but the enemy. nyt
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