Us Becoming Balkanized. Losing Sense Of Common Purpose.

[TheMastersNemesis]

It just seems like the forces of division are so great the country is losing any sense of common purpose. There are so many secessionist and contrary movements you wonder what our country will look like 50 years from now. We have so many elements who want to secede from the union or substantially change the Constitution that we could look like Africa over time with multiple tribal regions.

Gun owners want open carry everywhere and insist the public accept AK 47's and whatever anywhere in public. In movie theaters, court rooms, schools, playgrounds, grocery stores, bars, etc, etc, etc. Christians want government by the Bible, prayer in schools, creation science, alchemy or whatever. Certain elements want to get rid of all public lands and public roads. Other elements want NO public employees and only private government. Others want gated communities with their own disaster escape plans and own amenities. Other elements only want white control or white areas having townships like South Africa.

And such divisions go on and on and get more mean by the day. If certain elements got their way the South would have its own nation. California would be divided into 5 states. Illinois would be two states Chicago and down state. New York would have two states. Cities would be their own states and rural areas would be separate states.

We are turning into the Hatfields and McCoys politically. I am tired of the meme "get out of my country".

[AngryAmish]

1. US is becoming increasingly multi-ethnic.

Multi-ethnic regions tend to be Balkinized. Like, the Balkins.

There is more social cohesion in less diverse places.

[Renew Deal]

2. NY does not want to be divided

No matter what some cranks say about making LI a state. It is not a popular movement.

Divisions are normal in politics. Sometimes they are extreme, sometimes not. I think the history to think about with America is The empires (Greek, Roman, Etc.). They couldn't survive over hundreds of years. Can America? We're only 239 years in. We have an advantage in that we have a common language compared to the divided Europeans.

It will take one of the parties becoming dominant for a long time for some of these issues are settled. Otherwise, many of the arguments will continue until someone becomes dominant.

[Igel]

4. You're looking at geography.

It's easy to do. Simplistic, though.

It's also safe to do. Since most of the geographic divisions reflect older divisions, while most of the really deep divisions in American society these days have only gotten worse or even began within the last 70 years. Those reflect primarily innovations and changes, confrontations with and challenges to how the country mostly ran and reflect both changing ideologies and changing demographics.

People can live with great social cohesion given a means of negotiating power and position if cultural divisions are distributed geographically. Ghettos were set up to some extent for this, to prevent multiple claims for power in a small area. Cantons accomplish the same purpose. A country or society cannot live with the lack of social cohesion that results from 10 different groups all demanding overlapping and outsized portions of control and power. One need not be a separatist or supremacist to engage in this, those are just extremes.

Take a research group of 5 people. Most of the time if you ask members to evaluate their own contribution after the fact, something close to 150% of the credit is claimed, when there's only 100% to go around. But it doesn't matter--the research is done, published, and things go on. Now imagine if money and job promotion depended on how much of the article or research was attributed to each person. Suddenly there'd be researchers claiming far more than they deserved, others would be shut out (since 100% is all there is), and the animosity would destroy the lab group unless there was some authority above them dictating apportionment of perks with the authority to severely punish those who didn't agree. That authority cannot be democratic because then it would reflect the problem it's trying to solve, and would pick winners and losers ultimately not based on contribution but based on group identity and lines of power. Instead it becomes totalitarian to do what such entities do or develops what's called a "deep state," one that wields most of the power regardless of who's elected to the top office--parceling out perks based on group identity and ideology or for support from their power base.

That's American society. And the government, divided as it is, and as those being given more of the pie like to celebrate because it's their due of that 150/100 that's available, is becoming an increasingly entrenched deep state.

[enough]

3. In the 1950's, '60's and '70's, the battles over school desegregation

were massive and massively divisive. The struggles over public lands have been going on non-stop from the very beginning of their creation. The struggle over the creation of Social Security was epic, and still continues. Same with Medicare.

I'm not sure that sense of common purpose has ever really been that universal in this country.

[dembotoz]

6. but at least we could all hate the russkies

isis ain't as much when you remember how we used to do air raid drills in the schools....

[pampango]

5. "US vs THEM" as opposed to "We're all in this together". I know which side republicans come down on.

"Balkanizing" US is one of their goals. Divide and conquer.

[The2ndWheel]

7. Your not wanting the things listed in the first two paragraphs contributes to that sense

of losing a common purpose. Your version of common purpose isn't inherently or objectively better than the version of common purpose that someone else has.

One of the main reasons we have such mass societies with a theoretical common purpose is because the energy is cheap enough to keep it all together. People are tribal. You can see it in your post, and that's not a knock against you. The number 300 million doesn't even make sense. We can't really conceptualize how many people are Americans. Every Senator, on average, is somehow supposed to represent millions of people. Every congressperson, on average, is somehow supposed to represent hundreds of thousands of people. That's impossible. Of course you couldn't add more representatives though, to get things to a more human scale, because then there would be far too many cooks in the kitchen, and absolutely nothing would get done.

Then you have the idea where every person is supposed to follow their own dreams, which helps to decrease anything common. You have groups of people, and then sub groups, and sub groups of the sub groups, and etc, etc, etc, and they're all supposed to somehow work together in the end. All the technology we have makes more and more people need each other less. You can move from one city, to another city, to another state, to another country if you want, decreasing any ties you have to people and places.

What's really the one thing that a lot of people have in common? They pay taxes. The infrastructure those taxes pay for is about the only thing keeping 300+ million people together. So outside of all of us being "Americans", which is just a label that exists in our own minds like anything else, what is supposed to be our common purpose? Freedom? Freedom to do what? Anything you want.

[TheMastersNemesis]

8. The Point Of My OP Is That It Seems We Are Out Of Balance When I Comes To Common Goals.

We had a more common purpose when care taking our publicly held resources like national parks, infrastructure et al. Now we have movements that want to split up our most needed resources like water, highways, sewer systems and sell them off of even foreign corporations. Public ownership of resources bind us together and it is really like socialism. Our public school system is part of that infrastructure. Now there are forces that want to fragment and eliminate public educations altogether.

There has always been a tug of war over federal versus local control. However there are some things where local control does not work very well. There are certain resources that should not become commodities. Water is one of the most crucial. When you make that a commodity that can be traded like stock and monetize it in such a negative way it becomes a problem.