Watching events in America unfold
has become almost an obsession with me, as well I suspect as a chunk of the rest of the world. Certainly the media anyway.
It looks like a country at war with itself. So much individual expression and opinion has been harnessed into all sorts of different kinds of tribalism; anti-vaxxers, the pro-gun lobby, the worshipping of wealth, the worship of a narrow kind of christianity, reflex patriotism, anti-socialism....so many.
So much freedom to express and defence of that right to expression with so little tolerance of "other" ; opinions, beliefs, cultures, political systems. Or is it just what's prevalent on Facebook and Twitter? Certainly reading articles in Atlantic, or HuffPost or NYT there are a lot of smart, incisive thinkers and observers in America - why do they get so little traction and attention? Is it just a lot of people shouting loudly who overcome their voice? Or is mainstream media just adding fish into the sharktank and streaming the live feed to the rest of us?
We have most of the same stuff happening here in NZ - church ministers peddling chlorine based covid cures, right wing neo-nazi groups etc. but they don't get the same coverage or backing here. And we have our share of reflex right-wing media pundits who don't seem to have much going for them except that they're some combintaion of smooth talkers or pretty faces or ex-sportspeople. But even they aren't espousing really intolerant, or just stupid stuff (usually). Well Mark Richardson does sometimes but he's in a class of his own.
Is it just the sheer scale of the US compared to NZ - 60 times our population, or is it something about the way society there is structured? Certainly a less egalitarian society is harder to find in the free world, in spite of all the rhetoric about freedom. The pursuit of wealth as a primary raison de travailler, maybe even raison d'être was apparent when I last visited there. Even on the ski lifts much of the talk I heard was about deals and finding some leverage to make more money. And if you aren't successful at that, through birth or circumstance or whatever then you're going to struggle there. And get left further and further behind whilst seeing your hard earned money line the pockets of the deal-makers. Perhaps then it's no wonder so many people are pissed (off) or thinking "f... everyone else and their opinions". Or that hopelessness leads to despair and anger because there isn't any way out to something better (the land of the free and all). Joe Biden isn't going to make that much difference to the working classes (or maybe a tiny bit) so why not believe the big (and magical) promises of Trump. It can't get any worse. Can it?