It’s Time to Re-Unite the Divided States of America
Newly arriving in a foreign country like I did when I came to the United States three years ago offers the advantage of an outsider’s perspective.
Naturally, I was aware of the political and cultural lay of the land before I came to these shores. I had lived in New York City for about a year in 2003/04 and kept abreast of U.S. domestic news by reading a range of newspapers online on a daily basis. I was well informed about current affairs, knew my fair share of American history, and was able to name all 50 states (minus the state capitals). I was excited to move to Los Angeles and to pursue a new career in the country of boundless opportunities where only the sky is the limit.
What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was the extreme level of divisiveness and tribalization that I encountered once I got here.
Switching channels between CNN and Fox News felt like these two television stations reported not only from different countries but from parallel galaxies. The vitriolic stoking of resentment by Fox News was matched by an attitude of smug moral self-righteousness on the part of CNN. The same, if to a lesser degree, was true for MSNBC with its unconcealed liberal bent and the politically one-sided late-night talkshows of CBS, while ABC News seemed to be mainly concerned with unabashedly marketing products of its parent company Disney. I came to realize that these broadcasters had in fact little resemblance with the legendary reporting of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather who considered it their public duty to deliver the news impartially and to break down complex political issues for their audiences in a fair and measured manner.
It became apparent to me that today’s television stations had abandoned any effort to offer a narrative that a majority of the American people could subscribe to. With Fox News leading the way in the 1990s, these national broadcasters instead choose to pander to the political fringes by fostering indignation and finger pointing. A siege mentality seems to have descended on the nation, encouraging audiences to retreat into their own echo chambers by shielding themselves from any opposing viewpoints while lapping up self-congratulatory validation of their own ideological convictions.
Taking a step back from these phenomena, it all looked to me like a big circus for an increasingly immature audience. And of course that’s what it is: today’s media conglomerates have turned news into entertainment, into a partisan variation of reality TV. The fact that a former host of “The Apprentice” was elected to the highest office in the country is symptomatic of that development. Spectacle trumps substance. Or put more succinctly: our ever greater appetite for amusement, distraction and indignation is leading to an ever greater infantilization and tribalization of the general public.
And then there’s of course the internet accelerating this trend. The social media corporations, which have eclipsed the reach of more traditional news outlets in the past ten years, amplify this polarizing trend exponentially. The deceptive algorithms of Facebook & Co. are geared towards generating clicks and screentime, all for the sake of boosting advertisement revenue. These un-social media foster escapism and loneliness at the intersection of resentment and addiction, essentially encouraging people to simmer in their confined opinion silos.
If you take the time to look at a few publicly available statistics and throw them into the mix, you see the emerging picture of a nation that has lost its compass. Here are five trends that are alarming indeed:
- The real median income of middle-class families has stagnated since 1970. Globalization, automization and digitalization threaten to aggravate that trend for the Generation Z and beyond.
- In 2021, the nation’s birth rate has declined for the sixth straight year. 44 percent of adults under the age of 50 say it’s unlikely they’ll ever have children.
- The number of suicides and casualties of drug overdoses are at an all-time high. In the past year alone, the country counted more than 100’000 overdose deaths, mainly from opioids.
- For the first time since World War II, life expectancy among Americans has decreased for two consecutive years (even if you discount casualties from COVID-19).
- 54 percent of Americans sometimes or always feel that nobody knows them well.
Letting these statistics sink in, you can’t help but sensing the despair, anguish and hopelessness gripping this nation. There’s no grand narrative any longer holding this unique and amazing country together. The limitless optimism and can-do-attitude so characteristic of the United States in the past has taken a big hit, and the future seems no longer bright and promising but blurred and threatening.
The preambel of the U.S. Constitution expresses the ambition to form a more perfect union. There’s no question that we’re currently outright failing at pursuing that noble goal. In order to breathe new life into that ideal, we’re called upon to overcome the cacophony of civil infighting that is plagueing the United States of America in our day and age. Because nothing good will come of perpetuating the culture wars that tear apart our social fabric and destroy families and friendships.
I strongly believe that a majority of Americans actually yearn for an end to the ideological sniping, the finger pointing and the endless display of outrage and negativity. Emerging from an 18-month long global pandemic, we now have the unique opportunity to reassess our priorities and build bridges across the ideological divides that scar this nation. It’s time to start listening to each other rather than shouting at each other. It’s time to rise to the challenges of our time and to rekindle the aspiration of the founding fathers to form a more perfect union.
The way to do that will be the topic of the next publication of the Arkadia Academy, so please make sure to stay tuned. A small hint: it’s a line from the Declaration of Independence that offers the key. In the meantime, I’d like to encourage you to enter the conversation and leave a comment in the section below. Thank you!
— Felix Grisebach is the co-founder of the Arkadia Academy for Self-Discovery™ in Santa Monica, Calif.
