Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Jeff Goldberg: You’ve written entire books on this general subject, but try to answer this question in a couple of lines: What causes you to worry the most about America’s future as a unified, coherent country?

George Packer: We Americans don’t just disagree with one another. We don’t just have different values, narratives, and perceptions of truth. We actually see one another as moral threats, incompatible with all that we consider good, and we fantasize about a country in which the threats are no longer around. Not to be melodramatic, but you can recognize this kind of thinking in countries that fall into civil war.

Jeff: You think we’re actually heading to civil war?

George: Not likely, not with violence on a large scale. More like a cold civil war that continues to erode democracy, make every election seem existential, and prevent us from solving our major problems, with long-term decline.

Jeff: Are there, in your mind, credible, discernible off-ramps?

George: I see three ways this could change. One is separation (not actual secession, but red and blue areas having more and more political autonomy). Another is conquest (one side wins a decisive majority). Neither of these seems very tenable. The third off-ramp is more complex but more feasible: government-led improvements in people’s lives, a reversal of the inequality that’s at the root of much of our disunion, along with socially binding ideas like universal national service and better K–12 education (civics!).

Jeff: Reversing “the inequality that’s at the root of our disunion” seems like a pretty big damn thing. But put that aside: How do you convince people that (a) selfless national service and (b) a universal civics agenda could, or should, be done?

George: Becoming more equal as Americans is a huge thing. What matters is that we start moving in the right direction—and I think in recent months we’ve begun. As for national service and universal civics (though not a national curriculum, which would probably self-destruct), they would take some explaining, some persuading. But I don’t think they’re impossible. Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans rate civic education as the single best way to strengthen American identity, and there’s a bipartisan bill in Congress to spend $1 billion on U.S. history and civics. Maybe Americans are beginning to grasp that a Thirty Years’ War between the red and the blue is not the best way to remain a strong democracy. Maybe there’s an untapped, even unconscious desire, especially among younger people, to be asked to do something larger than themselves. We’ll never know until we try.

Some time back I mused about adopting a new tactic of disregarding all the name-calling and other nonsense that progressives barf all over threads, and instead narrowly focusing like a laser only on the main point of the discussion.

I asked you (and a few others) what you thought of me trying out such a tactic. So far as I recall I never got any feedback from anyone who I asked.

My only question is why would you stay somewhere where this is how you feel? Being name-called, etc? If I was at someone's home and this was happening, I'd just leave.

Mame wrote:

My only question is why would you stay somewhere where this is how you feel? Being name-called, etc? If I was at someone's home and this was happening, I'd just leave.

If you run from bullies you will spend your entire life running.

The best way to deal with a bully is to hurt them badly. Of course, that is difficult to do on a messageboard. It's easier to do in real life.

You compare your interactions here with a person being picked on by bullies?

You seek out and pursue conflicts here with whoever will argue with you.

How many bullies have you heard of that plead with their “victims” to go away because they’d rather not interact with them?

.......... No magical solutions or silver bullets available. But we can work to move things in the right direction.

blatham wrote:

.......... No magical solutions or silver bullets available. But we can work to move things in the right direction.

Ditto, we got to! My question, when will the real Lincoln Republicans snow up?