The division in this country is overblown. It is a political construct. The only social or cultural division lies with those who are passionate about some topic or another, exclusive of almost any other. Those topics run the full gamut including immigration reform, gay marriage, elimination of the IRS, universal health care, and Social Security changes. And most people have views on all of those things–and few latch on to any one as their personal crusade. So, the divide is not nearly as dramatic as reported.
The real divide, if there is one that can be qualified, is that between those who are committed to individual responsibility and freedom, and those who are inclined to associate everything with groups. Boy do we have groups. I don’t care what your particular interest, pain, desire, or social status, there is a group out there wanting you to join. I actually heard a commercial on the radio this morning from the Heart Failure Society. I’m not sure, but I don’t think it is a lonely hearts club. But people will join. Emotional support, you know.
That is the real divide–those who need continual emotional support, and those who don’t. Those who need to be in a crowd, and those who view crowds as confining. Funny how that breaks down along the lines of Red/Blue in the election. Let’s simply look at the extremes. The high-brow social societies of old money live along the northeast coast. The glitterati of Hollywood and the recording industry pack a punch on the west coast.
Is this important? Can it be healed? No. No. It is part of what makes this country unique. I am free to be an individualist. Others are free to be associated with as many groups and organizations as they have time for. I can skip the Academy Awards ceremony. Others can’t. Still others wouldn’t dream of missing it.
And bloggers will have little real influence on the division. We can be a forum for discussion, and we can point out the good and bad we see in MSM, and some of those more talented bloggers can turn a phrase in just the right way to make people take a second look at their own perceptions. But our numbers are few in comparison to the discourse. People tend to read things they agree with and avoid the opposing view. In spite of my belief that I give ear to the other side, I avoid most contrarians myself. The ones I pay attention to are ones who have shown over time they are not blind followers of some idea. Jesse Jackson and Jerry Falwell–and bloggers who view the world as they do.
I began this site a year ago to give vent to my ideas. It may come as a shock to some of you that I have opinions. I wanted to write about our culture, our society, a little politics, international relations, education, and golf. The last six months have caught all of us and we got tangled in politics. The real question is whether we can break away from that. If there is a divide in this country, the political process, politicians, and activists have created it for their own benefit. We need to break that cycle.
We’ve seen the best way blogs have for healing whatever rift exists with the exposing of the CBS fraud memos. The blogosphere will push for accurate and balanced imformation from MSM in a way that wasn’t possible before. If our society has access to better information, a divide cannot exist. A culture war is difficult to start if reasonable people have reliable information. Opinion cannot be passed off as fact, and the facts have to stand up for themselves.
Blogs will disappear. Maybe this one. People who spent hours on their computers tracking the election will spend less time doing so. My readership dropped, as I’m sure many others’ did, immediately after the election. Bloggers will find a new direction, return to their previous pursuits, or drop out altogether. The junkies will always be around. Reasoned discourse will return and the reading and writing of blogs will become an exchange of ideas rather than “gotcha” and invective.
And if those leftie commie pinko slobs would ever pull their heads out of their butts, we wouldn’t have any divide in this country at all! They need to straighten up, get a haircut, remove those nose rings, or get the hell out of my country!
I’m nothing if not sensitive.
Homespun Symposium
This post is my submission to this week’s Homespun Symposium. The question posed by In Search of Utopia is:
Is the division in America important to you? What will be necessary to heal it? What part do you see Bloggers playing in that discussion …
Trackback by MuD & PHuD — November 23, 2004 @ 10:09 am
Sensitivity rocks.
Maybe I’m seeing more of a division because of where I am in life – I’m attending a very liberal law school. Their view is that Bush and Cheney are incompetent, and evil, in that order. The day after the election, the students were almost in shock. Things are pretty much back to normal now, but feeling the tension on campus was disconcerting, to say the least. And it brought home to me just how different my views were from the vast majority of my fellow students, from teachers, and even administrators.
Comment by Zach — November 23, 2004 @ 4:42 pm