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Maybe America Would Be Better Off if It Broke Up into Separate Countries.
A thought experiment
The recent anniversary of the January sixth, 2021 storming of the White House has got me thinking about the polarization of American thought into two distinct camps. Liberals see the event as a deliberate attack on democracy, while conservatives tend to see it as an expression of freedom and a minor event where “not very many” people were killed.
(I think that even one person killed, even if they were careless, is one too many, let alone five, but maybe that’s just me).
The response to this event, I think, clearly illustrates how American society is divided against itself and that possible catastrophe looms ahead. I have been paying attention to America for a lot of years now as an outsider, and the surge in polarization in the last few years, to me, is breathtaking.
It has given me pause, as I will soon be moving to my neighbour to the south. I hope that my husband and I do not witness any of the nastiness one can read about almost any day of the week in the New York Times, like this one about the cherry wars in Michigan where Republicans and Democrats each had their own politically-aligned cherry stand and anti-maskers yelled abuse at people who showed up masked to buy cherries at the Republican stand.
