agip wrote:
Armstronglivs wrote:
You are assuming the divisions can be repaired, when every indication is that they are widening. "A house divided cannot stand" - and the US today is as divided as at any time since 1860.
I'd argue that the bolded part is false, although arguable and certainly we're in a divided time.
The late 60s/early 70s were much worse.
We had assassinations, riots, a very large war, cities were crumbling, oil crises, massive inflation, a bad recession, much more violence in the cities....the country felt like it was ripped apart and in terminal decline.
We're now in a bad place, but not as bad as those years.
Many of the factors above you describe above were external to America - such as the Vietnam War and the oil shocks with their resultant deleterious effects on the economy - although they clearly had a profound impact on the country. I would agree that there was considerable turbulence in American society and culture in the late-60's and early 70's - in some ways worse than today. But the differences that emerged then were less about what it meant to be American and more about the course that society should follow. There were generational differences, political differences and racial differences. But America was still one country. Today the divide goes very much to identity as American - Democrat and Republican have become tribal moieties that cannot agree on what constitutes reality let alone on how to respond to it. In the metaphorical sense, they no longer speak the same language. Race once again remains at the core of it. In that sense, the cultural divide today seems as stark and unbridgeable as it was between North and South in 1860.