America is not going to survive — at least, not in its traditional form.
That isn’t meant to be dramatic or serve as the introduction to catastrophe porn. Instead, it’s an assessment born of close observation and common sense.
If this nation ever existed upon a basis of shared values (and this is more debatable than you may think), it doesn’t now.
We are not merely divided by race, class, and religion but also by cultural sympathies, fundamental worldviews, and the lenses we use for understanding reality itself.
If we didn’t know this already, COVID has brought it into focus. The pandemic has broken us.
Or at least revealed the breakage that was always there.
Our divisions are more local than state-by-state
These divisions are often said to play out geographically, which is true. But the normative groupings used to mark this truth — red states and blue states — are inadequate to the descriptive task.
There are plenty of blue cities and communities in those red states — large urban centers or college…
