The American Political Divide Is Cultural Too

[Warning: Generalization and extrapolation ahead]

The conservative movement in America can wax poetic about the vast political divide between the blue states, with their soy-latte-sipping hipsters and pink-haired freaks, and the more common but quieter normal Americans outside of the big cities (and the suburban belts around them). The differences are stark and obvious: Big government, restrictions on God-given rights for the sake of safety or to prevent "misinformation," destruction of the sense of individuality that is quintessentially American, and a host of other degradations of what is American Exceptionalism.

Perhaps the greatest destruction is the sense of community, which seems counter-intuitive, because the goal of the progressive movement has been to create a communitarian society that makes people identical...fungible cogs in the machine. But that also destroys the sense that one is a part of a larger whole while maintaining independence and distinctiveness.

That is the wonderful paradox of freedom. We maintain our uniqueness and separation from the whole, but simultaneously respect the others who make up that whole. And that is what is missing in the great socialist experiment of the last 100 years in America. When people are reduced to being cogs in the machine, there is no reason to respect them as individuals, and no reason to treat them as anything other than just another cog...without individuality or importance.

The teeming masses in the cities demonstrate this every day. They are more interested in snapping photos of someone's troubles than actually being human and helping. Women are beaten in the streets of our cities, and we have endless video of those attacks, but curiously, no one reaches out a hand to help. We see it in the way the law-abiding deal with their fellow citizens...that free-floating aggression that manifests in a thousand ways: in their driving and walking and talking and eating in restaurants and shopping for milk.

If everyone is the same, then there is no reason to treat others as individuals...no reason to treat them as human beings...no reason to grant them the sense of uniqueness for which we all strive.

But vast swaths of America do treat others as individuals. The perhaps mythical small-town America does exist in some form, and it is those people who carry the spark of American Exceptionalism. That exceptionalism isn't just political...it is social and cultural and respects the sense that while we are part of a great whole, we are also unique, and deserve to be respected as individuals.

That's why outside of the big blue cities our murder rate is vanishingly low. That's why Americans give generously, that's why "thank you," and "yes ma'am" are words in common usage, and letting people through an intersection is part of many American's lives, and not just a punch line for some blue-haired lunatic or oblivious drunk soccer mom (the archetypal AWFL).

It is easy to objectify and diminish the people around you; it is much harder to maintain your individuality while respecting the individuality of the people around you. Andrew Breitbart was prescient when he said that "politics is downstream from culture." We see that today more than any time in our history, and it does not bode well for the health of our great country.

posted by CBD at 12:00 PM

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