"It was one of the most violent disturbances in American history, and it happened right here. Sanctuary District A. The first week of September, 2024."
Wow. This is fascinating, creative and provocative in the best sense. You need more readers or at least, more commenters.
One quick very subjective note on enemies "arriving at a point of mutual understanding with each other" and how the prospect of such an arrival might seem "implausible, preposterous, naïve." I had hoped before last year's presidential election that, were Biden to win and Trump to exit the stage, the part of the American left which is still classically liberal in temperament and instinct (Stephen Pinker and Jonathan Haidt are good representative examples) would be freed up somewhat to defend the traditions of tolerance, respect, objectivity, skepticism and so on in our institutions. I think this has, in fact, started to happen. We have forestalled the catastrophic version of our own Bell Riots. (One example: Andrew "Extinction Event" Sullivan reads like his old self again: irreverent, principled, balanced, a man of his civilization rather than his candidate.)
Even better - and this is really my main point - I see a knitting together of former antagonists on the right and left who have discovered they have far more in common than they realized. It's not knitting together like a fusion. The ancient debates will go on. Rather knitting together in the sense that opposing football teams are part of a common project, while rival street gangs are not.
In 1980 I had an extraordinary high school teacher who was born in the Netherlands, lost his father in WW II, and emigrated to the US in the 1960s. He scandalized our American History class by saying once that while Europeans were still deeply divided by ideology, Americans had a common ideology without the same deep divides. This struck us as preposterous and we objected. Carter vs. Reagan! What more proof did you need of our deep divisions? It made no sense to us then. Looking back, I see what he was pointing to. If he were alive today he probably wouldn't say the same thing, but I do sense a stirring of the old unity. A common threat will do that. I hope I'm right.
Liberals in American life are usually marks for manipulation by people who are more extreme and who have a clearer understanding of their own ideology and ultimate goals. I grew up seeing this manipulation come more from the right after 9/11 and more from the left during the Trump era. Haidt has a strong sense of himself and doesn't seem like much of a mark -- but that's not the case with liberals in general. When liberals understand themselves to be in crisis, they don't go looking for liberal intellectual leaders (like Haidt) but rather for extremist ideas, which they may convince themselves are the "natural progression" of their own liberalism, though they only think this because they so rarely understand what liberalism is, i.e they lack self-understanding. So I don't have a lot of faith in liberals in the long run.
Wow. This is fascinating, creative and provocative in the best sense. You need more readers or at least, more commenters.
One quick very subjective note on enemies "arriving at a point of mutual understanding with each other" and how the prospect of such an arrival might seem "implausible, preposterous, naïve." I had hoped before last year's presidential election that, were Biden to win and Trump to exit the stage, the part of the American left which is still classically liberal in temperament and instinct (Stephen Pinker and Jonathan Haidt are good representative examples) would be freed up somewhat to defend the traditions of tolerance, respect, objectivity, skepticism and so on in our institutions. I think this has, in fact, started to happen. We have forestalled the catastrophic version of our own Bell Riots. (One example: Andrew "Extinction Event" Sullivan reads like his old self again: irreverent, principled, balanced, a man of his civilization rather than his candidate.)
Even better - and this is really my main point - I see a knitting together of former antagonists on the right and left who have discovered they have far more in common than they realized. It's not knitting together like a fusion. The ancient debates will go on. Rather knitting together in the sense that opposing football teams are part of a common project, while rival street gangs are not.
In 1980 I had an extraordinary high school teacher who was born in the Netherlands, lost his father in WW II, and emigrated to the US in the 1960s. He scandalized our American History class by saying once that while Europeans were still deeply divided by ideology, Americans had a common ideology without the same deep divides. This struck us as preposterous and we objected. Carter vs. Reagan! What more proof did you need of our deep divisions? It made no sense to us then. Looking back, I see what he was pointing to. If he were alive today he probably wouldn't say the same thing, but I do sense a stirring of the old unity. A common threat will do that. I hope I'm right.
Liberals in American life are usually marks for manipulation by people who are more extreme and who have a clearer understanding of their own ideology and ultimate goals. I grew up seeing this manipulation come more from the right after 9/11 and more from the left during the Trump era. Haidt has a strong sense of himself and doesn't seem like much of a mark -- but that's not the case with liberals in general. When liberals understand themselves to be in crisis, they don't go looking for liberal intellectual leaders (like Haidt) but rather for extremist ideas, which they may convince themselves are the "natural progression" of their own liberalism, though they only think this because they so rarely understand what liberalism is, i.e they lack self-understanding. So I don't have a lot of faith in liberals in the long run.