Mr. Sinton - I don't know how I got on your email list. Anyway, I think you're missing an essential piece of the puzzle - who and what is causing the tribalism.
I fully agree that tribalism is a problem. But simply calling for us to come together without examining why it has gotten this bad is like pissing in the wind.
The truth is that one side has made a deliberate strategy of promoting tribalism and division, thereby exacerbating a problem that was already present. You, yourself, implicitly identify the bad actor. But to spell it out, one side falsely believes the other is a threat to democracy because of the lies it has been told. The other side believes the other is a threat to democracy, because it genuinely is a threat.
Hi Mr. Rawlins, If you don't wish to be on the list, I apologize, and invite you to cancel at your convenience.
If you scroll through the past year's worth of posts, you'll see that I have clearly dispelled the myth of false-equivalence. I make no doubt about the fact that both sides are not to blame--this is TOTALLY on the Republicans and Trumpers.
Because the blog is a reposting of my weekly newspaper column here in a very conservative community, I tend to indict with vehemence some weeks, and seek consensus other weeks. I have found that when I am less aggressively placing blame on the right, my local audience is more inclined to stick with me when I do get aggressive.
I think that if we all shared an agreed upon set of facts, we could hold the tribalism in check, just as did in the days of mass media. Today, with the audience able to select its news based on their existing opinions, we've all wound up in silos, some left, most right. This makes it nearly impossible to defeat the tribalism that is supported by skewed news and the social media algorithms that pour gas on the fire.
About the best we can do to tamp it down is to protect our institutions and not let a powerful legislative minority that lives in fear of replacement change our laws and jeopardize our republic's democracy.
Trump, the pandemic, and cable news/talk radio/social media have inflamed passions. Making sure they don't tilt the playing field is the first order of business. Even at that, I don't know how long, or if, we can ever get this genie back in the bottle.
Mr. Sinton - I don't know how I got on your email list. Anyway, I think you're missing an essential piece of the puzzle - who and what is causing the tribalism.
I fully agree that tribalism is a problem. But simply calling for us to come together without examining why it has gotten this bad is like pissing in the wind.
The truth is that one side has made a deliberate strategy of promoting tribalism and division, thereby exacerbating a problem that was already present. You, yourself, implicitly identify the bad actor. But to spell it out, one side falsely believes the other is a threat to democracy because of the lies it has been told. The other side believes the other is a threat to democracy, because it genuinely is a threat.
Hi Mr. Rawlins, If you don't wish to be on the list, I apologize, and invite you to cancel at your convenience.
If you scroll through the past year's worth of posts, you'll see that I have clearly dispelled the myth of false-equivalence. I make no doubt about the fact that both sides are not to blame--this is TOTALLY on the Republicans and Trumpers.
Because the blog is a reposting of my weekly newspaper column here in a very conservative community, I tend to indict with vehemence some weeks, and seek consensus other weeks. I have found that when I am less aggressively placing blame on the right, my local audience is more inclined to stick with me when I do get aggressive.
In any event, thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Do you have a plan, a mechanism to do that?
I think that if we all shared an agreed upon set of facts, we could hold the tribalism in check, just as did in the days of mass media. Today, with the audience able to select its news based on their existing opinions, we've all wound up in silos, some left, most right. This makes it nearly impossible to defeat the tribalism that is supported by skewed news and the social media algorithms that pour gas on the fire.
About the best we can do to tamp it down is to protect our institutions and not let a powerful legislative minority that lives in fear of replacement change our laws and jeopardize our republic's democracy.
Trump, the pandemic, and cable news/talk radio/social media have inflamed passions. Making sure they don't tilt the playing field is the first order of business. Even at that, I don't know how long, or if, we can ever get this genie back in the bottle.
Thanks for being a concerned citizen.