Monday, February 5th, 2018
Stephan: About 10 years ago I could see from the social outcome data that the United States was breaking into two countries; I called it The Great Schism Trend. One country was exclusionist, religiously conservative, not fact-based, fearful, racist, with values principally focused on every person for themselves. The other was inclusionist, spiritual but not religious, socially progressive, fact-based optimistic with values principally focused on wellbeing for all as a social goal. In the years since this trend has only become ever more more pronounced. Although it is usually discussed in the context of partisan politics, I believe that the primary source of this is much deeper than that; it has to do with fear. Politics is just the way it usually gets talked about.
Here is a snapshot that makes the difference very clear.
Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity.
Credit: Andrew Lipovsky/NBC/NBCU
Credit Bank and Bennett Raglin/WireImage
On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was literally laughing. Over on Fox News, Sean Hannity put up his dukes.
At 9 last night, you could just flip between the two and see an encapsulation of our two Americas — total dismissal of the memo’s import, vs. the assertion that it’s “only about 15 percent of what’s coming.”
So, Rachel, how was your day?
- “This thing?! This was two weeks of: This memo is going to end everything. This memo, have you heard about the memo? Hashtag: Release the memo! This memo will make Donald Trump innocent. This memo will put Robert Mueller in jail. It will abolish the FBI. The Justice Department will have to rename itself the Donald J. Trump & Family Private Security Task Force.”
- “I mean, I can’t believe this is it.”
- “I don’t really believe in the whole Cable News Wars idea. I know people who work across the street at the Fox News Channel. I’ve got friends that work […]
