Joshua McDonald, a conservative Christian who lives in reliably Republican territory between Washington and Richmond, supports Donald Trump for president. He doesn’t know a soul who’s for Hillary Clinton.
Ellen Tobey, an office manager in the liberal college town of Charlottesville, will vote for Clinton. She knows of no close friends or relatives planning to push the button for Trump.We increasingly live in a country where we don't know each other. People sort themselves by their political leanings and refuse to associate with those who think differently from them, and we increasingly think that is OK. Our humanity can be reduced to our worldview, and those that are not of our tribe are not worth knowing.
When the vast majority believed that this vale of tears was only a "preseason" for eternity, such an attitude was simply unacceptable. Family relationships, community proximity, traditions, culture, "good fellows well met" were FAR more important than the myriad of petty political squabbles that were ultimately of no real importance. But no longer.
Somewhere on the road to supposed "utopia" of every man being his own priest, philosopher and bartender, we became islands. Once, "no man was an island", but now we increasingly are -- not only "islands", but our own planets, or even universes. The pain of trying to understand those that could think differently is simply too much to contemplate.
We were once a "melting pot" -- with a set of shared values and an identity that surpassed our own perspective. No longer -- now our "tribe" is all there is, and "the other" must be shunted aside lest we are "triggered" to attempt to defend our fragile tribal identity.
Our sexual preferences are "out of the closet", but our fragile world view is completely closeted and confined to our ghetto of like minded tribe members -- and this is "progress".
BOistan is a house completely divided -- and it has fallen.
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