The Demise of the Big Tent Made Us Stupid

Dennis Sanders

Dennis is the pastor of a small Protestant congregation outside St. Paul, MN and also a part-time communications consultant. A native of Michigan, you can check out his writings over on Medium and subscribe to his Substack newsletter on religion and politics called Polite Company.  Dennis lives in Minneapolis with his husband Daniel.

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88 Responses

  1. Barney Quick says:

    Dennis, this needs wide dissemination. (I’ll do my part.) It sure resonated with me, as much, if not most of my own writing is on this theme.
    As I wrote in an OT piece a while back titled “Confessions of a Rock and Roll History Teacher,”
    “There are certain sociocultural shifts that have always been hard for me to convey, and more so as time goes on. For instance, I’m constantly trying to more effectively impress upon students what kind of phenomenon The Ed Sullivan Show was. It ran on CBS from 1948 to 1971, and aired on Sunday nights. American families would clear off the supper dishes and gather in the TV room to watch it. It was a true variety show. Guests included Broadway show casts, circus acrobats, Jewish standup comedians from the clubs along 52nd Street, and, from 1956 on, rock acts. Something for every member of the family.”
    Alas, that era is now shrouded in the mists of antiquity.Report

    • Slade the Leveller in reply to Barney Quick says:

      Who has checked out, though? We’ve had conservatives railing against, inter alia, Hollywood, popular music, and modern architecture for years. All stuff that’s going to change over the course of time.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    Cue comments about how certain demographics we’re never part of the big tent in 3…2…1…Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    Yeah. Good post.

    How okay is it to disagree?

    If you can’t disagree on stuff, you’re going to find yourself outside of the tent.

    I make the distinction between “matters of taste” and “matters of morality” and the easy example is always “mayo vs. mustard”.

    Some people like mayo on their sandwiches.
    Some people like mustard on their sandwiches.

    That’s okay.

    But if someone comes in and starts explaining that mayonnaise is an animal product and we have a moral obligation to, at the very least, do no harm during our short time here and so you need to either switch to mustard or a somewhat more expensive avocadonnaise (seriously, tastes just like it, you can’t even tell!), suddenly, you’re in a moral argument when, moments before, you thought you were just wanting to put mayo on your sandwich.

    Hey, is that a turkey sandwich? Oh, there’s good news! Here are some somewhat more expensive turkey substitutes. This one is made with white beans and it slices pretty well. Tastes just like it! You can’t even tell!

    To what extent should the tent be able to say “we’re going to start kicking out people who want to continue to torture and kill animals”? To what extent should the tent be able to say “We don’t want to argue the mayonnaise argument. We’re here to deal with these issues and not those issues?”

    In recent years, it feels like the tent has been taken over by the Vegans who don’t even want to discuss mayonnaise. And many of the journalists who work at the big journalisming places are Vegan as well.

    And the Republicans seem to make a big deal out of how they’re eating steak tartar.

    And it feels like EVERYTHING is like that now.Report

    • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

      And it feels like EVERYTHING is like that now.

      Maybe you should entertain the idea that politics actually _isn’t_ like your analogy, and in fact has a real tangible impact on some people’s lives?Report

      • CJColucci in reply to DavidTC says:

        I’ve often said that if I had any character I’d be a vegan, but I don’t, so I’m not. The fact of the matter is that there really are genuine moral issues about mayonnaise. Like most people, I put them aside, try not to think about them, and go about my business eating meat and mayonnaise, being weak and sinful and all. But that doesn’t mean the moral issues aren’t there; I just disregard them when I can. And last I looked, mayonnaise is still readily available. I bought a jar last week without fear of repercussions. If it gets to the point where I can’t buy a jar of mayonnaise unmolested by anything other than my dozing conscience, I’ll worry about it then.
        On the rare occasions that I actually do think about the ethical issues involved in meat and mayonnaise, or someone else raises them, I get uncomfortable. I guess Jaybird does too, but I never demanded of the world that it not make me uncomfortable.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

          I am blessed to be a mustard person.

          I don’t demand of the world that it not make me uncomfortable. My goodness, I don’t even know to whom I would make that demand! Probably not to the people who are telling me to vote for them, lest we all be damned for all time, that’s for sure.

          But I also don’t really see the mayo vs. mustard debate as a moral one.

          I see it as a matter of taste.

          Some people like mayo on their sandwiches.
          Some people like mustard on their sandwiches.

          That’s okay.Report

          • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

            What you say you see is what you say you see, not what’s there. I suppose seeing something and deliberately deciding to ignore it is less comfortable than saying you don’t see it at all. But I can handle the discomfort.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

              Ah, if I were confident in saying that what I see must be what is there, I’d probably be a lot happier chasing others out of my tent.

              As it is, I’m not sure that the Vegans have done the necessary groundwork to say that we’re not going to discuss this anymore.

              I mean, assuming democracy. If we’re not, the old Southern Babtist model is as good as any, I guess. Pretty sustainable, for a while.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                Take that up with someone who agrees that “we’re not going to discuss this anymore” or who
                wants to throw people out of the tent. I’m not the one telling people that their moral issues are only a matter of taste.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                Yeah, people generally hate being told that they don’t have any special insight into morality. Hell, they have no idea what to do when they’re told that they need to shoulder the burden of proof in the discussion.

                Generally they just resort to something about sin and outer darkness and whatnot.

                (It’s also generally interesting to argue that even if something might be a matter of morality instead of a matter of taste, “you can’t legislate morality” and to see where that takes you. You wouldn’t believe the extent of jurisdiction some of these people believe they have!)Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

                I agree with Jay here. Making a moral claim means supporting that moral claim with a convincing argument.

                If your argument fails to convince, you need to work on your argument until it starts getting traction.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                The logic flaw is that the difference between morality and aesthetics is an arbitrary one and is itself an enforcement of a private morality.

                Who says that a dietary restriction on pork is aesthetic, while equality of women is morality?

                Tossing one into the bin called “silly frivolous aesthetics” and the other into the bin called “Sober profound morality” is itself just an arbitrary and personal moral stance, then forcing that moral framework onto unwilling subjects.

                “You need to support a moral claim” is true, but with any society, the obvious question is, “Or else what?”Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                the difference between morality and aesthetics is an arbitrary one and is itself an enforcement of a private morality

                That’s one hell of an unshared premise.

                And given that “aesthetics” is just a way to say “matter of taste” with your pinky extended, I’m not seeing how the premise doesn’t lead inexorably to “immoral == distasteful”.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                That’s exactly my point, that premises are never shared.

                Even the line between aesthetic and moral is itself a matter of arbitrary subjective opinion based on morality.

                Asserting that mayo/mustard is aesthetic instead of moral isn’t true or false, but merely irrelevant because that judgement is itself a subjective choice which isn’t shared.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Well, I don’t want to spoil stuff, but we’re going to wander through deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics before long and, man, some of that stuff is going to blow your MIND.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                That’s the whole point of making the supporting arguments, to establish shared premises.

                Not everyone is on board with gay rights, but enough have found the arguments in favor convincing enough so that great strides have been made in protecting those rights.

                Hence we have a greater shared premise that all people are deserving of rights, regardless of sexual orientation.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                The weakness of moral claims is they all are essentially arbitrary and subjective. All of them, even the ones we assume are just self-evident, like “all men are created equal”.

                There is no backing for such a claim that doesn’t come down to “well, I believe it, so there”.

                And all aesthetic claims originate in the same place of personal revelation of how we perceive the world.

                So the distinction between moral/ aesthetic is personal, subjective and ultimately irrelevant.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                You don’t believe any of that to be true, though.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I suspect philosophers would take issue with that.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Or else it’s not a moral claim, it’s an aesthetic one.

                An aesthetic claim does not need a social / political./ Legal response. Or moral claim might.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                There is a big difference between accepting the existence of a moral issue and accepting a particular resolution of a moral issue. One need not accept the vegan’s resolution of the moral issue of eating meat and mayonnaise, but there is a moral issue. As far as I can tell, though I am willing to be persuaded otherwise, there is no moral issue about eating mustard versus ketchup, two condiments of purely vegetable sources. That is purely a matter of taste. But mayonnaise and meat involve the treatment of sentient beings, which raises issues that avocado “mayonnaise” and tofurkey do not.
                So what do we do with this moral issue? We can adopt the vegan’s resolution. We can argue that the vegan’s resolution is wrong. We can decide that we don’t sufficiently care about the moral issue to interfere with our consumption of meat and mayonnaise. Those are all legitimate options, though the third might lead to some moral discomfort. But all of them are at least honest responses to the moral issue.
                There is another response, to say that mayonnaise v. mustard is morally equivalent to ketchup v. mustard and, therefore, a matter of taste. That may be less strenuous than adopting or opposing or less uncomfortable than ignoring, but it is not honest. It may, however, get you through the night.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                Pythagoras argued that the fava bean contained the souls of the dead and it was morally wrong to eat them.

                Personally, I don’t see a moral issue with eating fava beans.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                Well, you and Pythagoras can argue it out. Is it your view that Pythagoras is wrong about whether fava beans contain the souls of the dead? Or is it your view that it is OK to eat fava beans even if they contain the souls of the dead? Presumably, if you and Pythagoras, or a present-day disciple, were to sit down and argue it out, neither of you would be satisfied with bald assertions about what you personally see or don’t see.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                That’s probably true… but I don’t think that it’s particularly dishonest of me to not see a moral issue at all when it comes to eating the simple fava bean.

                Despite the assertions of others that there is a moral issue here.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                If, like most of us, you don’t believe that fava beans contain souls of the dead, then that’s a reason, and a good one, for rejecting the Pythagorean claim and asserting that, therefore, there is no moral issue. It isn’t just a question of what you “see.”Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                I’m not crazy about the whole “I make an assertion, now you have a moral issue to wrestle with” dynamic.

                You may like it. That’s fine. You do you.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                If you’re “not crazy” about dealing with someone’s assertion of a moral issue, and don’t wish to engage it, you are free to ignore it. You were the one who started all this by whining about people raising moral issues about mayonnaise and meat that don’t — unless you’re a Pythagorean — apply to mustard and ketchup.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                I’m not the one telling people that their moral issues are only a matter of taste.

                This seems like forever ago…

                Anyway, the analogy was to people throwing folks out of the tent over the mayo question.

                I’m glad we can look back at the assertions about beans and laugh.

                How silly those assertions were!Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                I suppose there’s a point, but there’s nothing to be gained trying to find out what it is.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                It’s agreeing with the point of the original post and saying that there should be more things that are considered okay to disagree about and leave unresolved.

                Even at the cost of agreeing that, okay, there are issues that we’re just not only going to leave off the table, we’re going to not argue about them. Certainly not throw people out of the tent over them.

                Even if they’re moral issues.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                What amazing is that this is being said, in the midst of a mob of insanely angry people threatening school boards with violence over the aesthetic non-gender conforming clothing choices made by students.

                Have you told these people that this is not a moral issue?

                How’d that turn out?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                The real life example I’d use is “Defund the Police”.

                “Quit talking about Defund. I know that it’s important to you. I know that it’s one of the most important issues of our time. We’re not going to debate it. We’re not going to talk about it at the meetings.”Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                See how much simpler and clearer that is than your silly mayonnaise v. mustard analogy? Think of all the time and effort that you could save for everyone if you just said what you meant.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                The mayo v. mustard analogy became unsilly when people started wanting to discuss the lack of honesty involved in completely ignoring the moral problems when it comes to eating mayonnaise.

                Or maybe that’s when it became transcendently silly to the point where it paid off all of the time/effort.

                In any case, I don’t consider it time wasted.

                I consider it time well spent.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                So just to be clear, though I know that’s not your game, are you saying that you have considered the moral issues vegans raised about eating mayonnaise and disagree with their conclusions, which is fine, that you prefer not to think about them, which most of us do, or that that they are mistaken in thinking that there is a moral issue about mayonnaise at all? And if so, why?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                I’m the guy who wrote the initial comment?

                Like, the part here was written by me?

                But if someone comes in and starts explaining that mayonnaise is an animal product and we have a moral obligation to, at the very least, do no harm during our short time here and so you need to either switch to mustard or a somewhat more expensive avocadonnaise (seriously, tastes just like it, you can’t even tell!), suddenly, you’re in a moral argument when, moments before, you thought you were just wanting to put mayo on your sandwich.

                Now I want to say that the above is not a strawman of the Mayo Is Murder position (though calling the position “Mayo Is Murder” is a strawman).

                So if I am a p-zombie who has no internal life at all, merely stumbling from comment to comment, I really can’t be trusted to say “I’m not a p-zombie” because, as we both know, that’s what a p-zombie would say anyway.

                But I put the Mayo Is Murder position in the same place as Pythagoras’s Fava Bean position.

                “Feh.”, I say. Dismissing the moral question entirely.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                So, to recap, the vegan makes a moral claim, supported by what appears to be a moral argument, that mayonnaise is an animal product and we mayonnaise eaters are complicit in the mistreatment of sentient beings, so we shouldn’t eat mayonnaise.
                One can, in response:
                1. Agree with the argument
                2. Disagree with the argument, or
                3. Ignore the argument.
                You seem to be saying there is a fourth option, that this argument, which appears in the normal form of a moral argument, is, despite appearances, not a good moral argument or a bad moral argument; rather, it is not a moral argument at all. Which requires some, you know, actual argument.
                Unless what you’re really doing is expressing exasperation at having to put up with the question at all.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                Lifted from Philosophy Now:

                Pythagoras the vegetarian did not only abstain from meat, he didn’t eat beans either. This was because he believed that humans and beans were spawned from the same source, and he conducted a scientific experiment to prove it. He buried a quantity of beans in mud, let them remain there for a few weeks, and then retrieved them. He noted their resemblance to human fetuses, thus convincing himself of the intimate relationship between beans and humans. To eat a bean would therefore be akin to eating human flesh. Equally, to crush, smash, or dirty a bean would be to harm a human. Thus the very strict rule to abstain from beans.

                Feh.
                Even though it appears in the normal form of a moral argument, I dismiss it.

                I appreciate that you want me to see this or that condiment as an important moral decision that one could be making, but I sha’n’t.

                You know the pro-choice position that argues “getting an abortion is like removing a skin tag”?

                I’m like that, but with mayonnaise.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                So what you’re really doing is expressing exasperation at having to put up with the question at all.
                Nice to have cleared that up.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                I know that you want to be able to create moral obligations on my part by appealing to premises that I don’t share, but you are going to have to do more work than appeal to third parties appealing to fourth parties on behalf of a principle that you don’t even hold.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                To quote the original premise:

                Like, the part here was written by me?

                But if someone comes in and starts explaining that mayonnaise is an animal product and we have a moral obligation to, at the very least, do no harm during our short time here and so you need to either switch to mustard or a somewhat more expensive avocadonnaise (seriously, tastes just like it, you can’t even tell!), suddenly, you’re in a moral argument when, moments before, you thought you were just wanting to put mayo on your sandwich.

                You’re the one who put up the vegan moral argument as the thing you wished to comment on. But whatever your objection to it is, you still won’t say. All you’ve done is express distaste for having it brought up by whoever brought it up and annoyed you in the first place. If you’re satisfied with irritable mental gestures and don’t want to engage with an argument you brought up to prove who knows what — other than that you don’t want to be annoyed — whatever gets you through the night.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                My objection to it was underneath that part:

                To what extent should the tent be able to say “we’re going to start kicking out people who want to continue to torture and kill animals”? To what extent should the tent be able to say “We don’t want to argue the mayonnaise argument. We’re here to deal with these issues and not those issues?”

                In recent years, it feels like the tent has been taken over by the Vegans who don’t even want to discuss mayonnaise. And many of the journalists who work at the big journalisming places are Vegan as well.

                And the Republicans seem to make a big deal out of how they’re eating steak tartar.

                And it feels like EVERYTHING is like that now.

                Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

                You need to make the first argument that X is a moral issue. Then you need to make arguments for why your particular resolution to X is the correct one.

                TANSTAAFL, you have to work for these things.

                For example, once upon a time, a large majority of people were of the opinion that what you did in the bedroom and with whom was a moral issue of great concern, and that it required legal intervention to address. Since then many have largely made successful arguments that as long as only consenting humans over the age of 18 are involved, what happens in the bedroom is a matter of taste and no interventions are necessary.

                I mean, it works both ways.Report

      • Chris in reply to DavidTC says:

        “Hey, sure you want to undermine my bodily autonomy, allow employers to discriminate against me on the basis of my skin color or religion or sexual orientation or gender identification, you want to deport my neighbors, to jail other neighbors for not having homes, to militarize the police in such a way that they are increasingly violent, particularly toward those whom they interact with the most, to undermine my children’s education in myriad ways, etc., but at the end of the day, we can put all of that aside and break bread together, confident in our shared values as Americans, amirite?”Report

      • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

        Well, please keep in mind that I’m travelling from Joe Rogan/Masking to Ukraine to whatever the thing is this week.

        And if everything is a 10 on the 10 scale when it comes to moral discussions, then nothing is.

        Good luck with your tent.Report

        • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

          Jaybird: Look, if Joe Rogan and Republican anti-masking getting people killed _and_ Russia killing people are both morally relevant, I have no idea how the left expects me to deal with their next freakout over *checks note* removing abortion rights getting people killed.

          Don’t they understand that people dying in preventable ways due to their own government’s action can’t _all_ be 10/10 on the moral scale?Report

        • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

          Actually, I just want to ask this question:

          You do literally understand the concept that, say, the Supreme Court threatening to overturn Obergefell is actually a serious issue for gay people? Do you think that’s valid, a serious worry that their own marriage is going to be dissolved? Like, one that actually is 10/10 on the moral discussion?

          What the concern that parents of trans kids have that the government is going to take their kids away? Do you think taking kids away is a 10/10?

          Do you understand that these are _real_ concerns, and not the same as people flaming Rogan for being an idiot?

          Because the stuff _presented to you_ by the media as what ‘the left’ is caring about is not actually what the left cares about, and the issues being discussed are not mayo vs. mustard, they are government arrests gay people for sodomy vs not that.

          Addition: The EXAMPLE GIVEN IN THE POST is ‘I sometimes worry that someone I actively tried to harm via laws forbidden them from marrying dislikes me. This makes me sad.’.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to DavidTC says:

        Why would a middle-aged white dude with a straight, nominally Christian background do anything like that? It would mean becoming less heliocentric?Report

  4. Mike Davis says:

    Is it the demise of a big tent that made us have political divisions, though? HUAC in the 1950’s? Counterculture and Civil Rights Movements of the 1960’s and the Feds sending the military into high schools to enforce integration during both those decades? The 70’s were chaotic with literal airline hijackings to Cuba almost every week. If we had modern mass media in the 70’s, we would probabably see it as 200% more divisive of a time period than now.Report

  5. Pinky says:

    What would be the source of our common culture? Our shared history, beliefs, or experiences, I’d think. But most Americans don’t share a long-term history going back hundreds of years, and our more recent history is a subject of intense debate. That ties into beliefs, where there are two dominant philosophical perspectives and no nationally-dominant creed. But all that has been talked about before. The thing I find interesting is that our cultural experiences aren’t made for us any more. They’re marketed to the world. They may have the US as their setting, but they’re designed to equally relatable to people of every culture. Independence Day is the last movie I can think of that was intended to be a blockbuster and held the notion of America up as worthy. It’s an interesting problem to me, because American culture (and Western culture in general) is so open that it’s made for an effective first approximation for a world culture, but it can only function as one if it pretends there’s nothing special about it. It’s the light beige carpet that you put into your house before you move, so that someone else will buy it and tear it up to put in the carpet they want.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

      In this, America is adapting to experiencing what every other nation in the world has experienced since always.

      That is, the experience of being merely one among many, your local culture being dominated by a global culture.

      For example, the global cultures who, in the American century, found their cultures invaded by foreign word like “le hamburger” or their sacred places like the Spanish Steps topped by the golden arches, or the traditional music swamped by rock n roll.

      It feels new to us because its been over a century since things were any different and no one alive can remember a time when America was merely a small upstart compared to the European empires.Report

      • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        I think you missed my point. One of the characteristics of American culture is its openness. We’ve imported other cultures and exported our own. What’s different now is that we’ve stopped producing our own.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

          Yes, that’s the point.

          In that, our cultural exports were like Ford model Ts, the universal hegemon.

          But now, even though we still produce Fords, they just aren’t the global hegemon, they’ve been eclipsed by other models.Report

          • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            I’m suggesting that there was something essentially American about our products (both exports and domestic) previously, and there isn’t now.Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

              True, that’s what hegemony means, that your product is so dominant you don’t need to offer what they want, but instead offer them what YOU want.

              When a scriptwriter imagines a scene, he isn’t thinking anymore about a viewer in Des Moines, but Shanghai and New Delhi.

              Another angle (which I really hope you are NOT reaching for) is that the new American cultural products are somehow not essentially American, not truly authentically American.

              Because that would be…something.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I hope so too. But my hopes are frequently disappointed.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                The culture produced by the US in the twentieth, “American”, century had I think three distinct characteristics. One is the amount, tied into the national size and productivity. Next, the cultural particulars of the US – think jazz and beef. The last, the one I’m most focused on here, is the American ethic. This ethic can be described in a lot of ways, but we could call it responsible individualism and American pride.

                The US output is still phenomenal. The cultural particulars aren’t getting as much attention anymore as our product seems catered toward international markets. That’s not a big deal, but it’s something. Our ethic seems to have disappeared though.

                I mentioned Independence Day. That movie displayed both responsible individualism and American pride. I don’t see those traits in DC or Marvel, or new Star Trek or Star Wars. The video game hero is as likely to be in the wrong as in the right, and his victory as likely to be tragic as inspirational.

                These thoughts haven’t quite cohered yet, but I’m working on it.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

                Cultures always change, both from internal evolution and external additions.

                There’s been a lot written about the heavy influence Eastern European Jews and other immigrants had on the cultural attitude of 20th century Hollywood, and or how the British musicians absorbed American blues and sold it back to us in altered forms.
                Or how film nor, which took a dark and cynical view of the world was an implicit rebuke to the mainstream culture.

                Trying to ascribe a coherent ethos to American culture like “responsible individualism” might be a case of wish casting your desires, to force an order where it doesn’t fit.

                Certainly American culture was noted for individualism, but that was as debatable then as it was today.

                The Ed Sullivan Show cropped out Elvis’ gyrating hips because some considered them to be an example of irresponsible individualism, the same way that some people want to ban same sex romances today.

                I’m not saying American culture hasn’t changed; on the contrary, I’m saying it has always been this roiling, turbulent state of change.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

                Where liberals an conservatives differ is that conservatives see pride in America as both unassailable AND performative, and liberals see pride as the basis of questioning which drives multicultural diversity. Liberals display pride in America by working to make it more inclusive while
                Conservatives display pride by trying to literally wave the biggest flag on the block.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

                Sorry, we’re less than six months out from liberals competing to wear the most masks, gloves, face shields….Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    I would like to point out that the period of American politics that everyone has seemingly endless amounts of nostalgia for was an exception not the rule. For most of American history, politics was extremely partisan and bitterly so. The bias of Fox News (or allegedly the New York Times, Slate, Vox, etc) was nothing compared to the bias of media during the 19th century or even up to the progressive era.

    I guess I kind of, sort of get the nostalgia for mid-20th century consensus politics because it is in the living memory of nearly every American except the Zoomers but it is important to remember that it was an exception probably brought on by a lot of extraordinary events and circumstances.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      It was also a historic one right before the civil rights movement. When the color of your skin, and your gender, determines whether you could get into the tent and then how close you sit to the stage.Report

  7. DavidTC says:

    Knowing he was a minority, he wondered what people thought of him as he walked Hotard. “In some way after that exchange, I think I’m viewed with suspicion by my neighbors because of an act of political expression, which is a little on the bizarre side,” he said. “I’m just a guy who has a dog and works a job.”

    LOL. ‘I publicly supported someone wants to stop a person I know from getting married and adopting kids, and I don’t like the fact that, after they pointed that out, I always wondered whether they didn’t like me’.Report

    • DavidTC in reply to DavidTC says:

      For conservatives (And plenty of liberals), politics is a game they play about social status and they get weirded out by the idea anyone might _care_ what anyone actually thinks. It’s all abstract philosophical debate.

      For the left, politics is their neighbors deciding to ruin their life because of who they are.Report

  8. Doctor Jay says:

    Yeah, count me among those who think atomization is a problem. I don’t think shutting down social media will fix this problem.

    I think that instead we need to build institutions that will bring people together. We need to be proactive about organizing around a few interests, rather than fragmenting based on all interests. I see some push in that direction already.

    What I mean is that in the online gaming community, the communities around smaller, more indy games are generally very positive, and focused. We can see that sometimes other issues and politics intrude, but they are generally managed fairly well. People stick to the topic, sometimes express disagreement of the form, “There’s a better way to do that!” but I rarely see stuff that is toxic. This is on Reddit and YouTube mostly. Also on the Steam forums.

    This suggests that this is a form of social organization that works, but it still contributes to atomization, in that only a part of one’s self is invested in Factorio or Stationeers or Satisfactory. I imagine that the bigger, more popular the game, the more likely it is to attract people who are disruptive.

    We need to get better at dealing with those disruptive people. And we need to organize around purpose, and stay on topic. This will help us, I think.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      Concur on the disruptive folks. People who troll for sport, or people for whom everything is of maximal import such that you are cast as evil for not agreeing with them in lockstep.

      And, of course, those two groups feed off each other and suck up all the oxygen in the room.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      All this “bring people together” stuff sounds nice in the abstract but it does not lead to the hugs and warm fuzzies that everyone think will occur. Singapore is a racially diverse country whose founders were concerned with race riots. The solution was to clamp down on any speech that could be socially divisive. I don’t think that is what anyone here wants.

      The United States is a very heterogeneous country filled with people with very different ways of looking at the world. There is no real kumbaya between me and a right-wing firebrand Evangelical. I don’t think pretending our vast ideological, ethical, and moral differences can be discussed in tea party dulcet tones is a balm.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        “We should bring all the people together in unity!”

        “Like which people?”

        “Oh you know. The groomers, the perverts, the feminazis, overeducated underloved cat women, the men wearing dresses, the soy boys, the race hustlers, the (((cosmopolitans))) the shiftless lazy young bucks buying Tbone steaks, and of course, the real Americans.”Report

  9. Chris says:

    I’m fascinated by conservatives’ love of an imaginary, even mythical 20th century, and in particular, a mythical mid-20th century, to the point that they’ve invented an America that, instead of a war most people ignored, dogs and fire hoses set on protestors, a sort of fracture in popular culture (as my grandfather, born in the 20s, used to say, “No good music was made after 1951”), a brutal proxy war that led to massive protests, assassinations of politicians and civil rights leaders, white flight, the feminist movement and its counter movements, the sexual revolution, the rise (as a political force) of American fundamentalism/Evangelicalism, the AIDS crisis and the deadly homophobia that it sparked, the war on crime, the war on the poor (as opposed to the war on poverty), Reagan, the “Moral Majority”, the incredibly polarizing Bush years (with the war on terror, Iraq, torture, indefinite detentions, domestic espionage, the DHS, etc., etc.), the financial crisis and the many social and political forces it unleashed, the extreme racism in reaction to a black president, and so on, and so forth, through Trump to today, was blissfully united in its Americanness. And we’re supposed to ignore all that and see unity because everyone watched the nightly news, MASH (listening to the same music is a hilariously ahistorical assertion, but minor compared to the overall ahistoricality (ahistoricalness?) of the overall piece).

    We live in turbulent times, to be sure, and compared with the 90s, which I suspect is when your formative years were, it does seem like the country is deeply fractured, but the unity of the 90s was an illusion (and not even a very well maintained one, as evidenced by the rise of the Gingrich faction, the war on PC, the Seattle protests, the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.., etc.).

    We are, undoubtedly, within the death throes of American economic hegemony, as evidenced by so many things (2008, the rise of China, the invasion of Ukraine and the way our reaction to it undermines the order that underlies that hegemony, and another bunch of etc.’s), and it is unpleasant. Throw in a pandemic, rapid cultural shifts of a scale similar to those of the 60s (both in action and reaction), and the fact that we can see it all constantly on social media and 24 hour news channels, and it’s not a particularly pleasant time to live in, I will admit. At least in the 90s you could reasonably ignore most of the effects of the disunity if you lived in a suburb or the country (as long as you weren’t a farmer, or poor), or perhaps even a wealthy urban neighborhood. But man, mythologizing the past is not going to help us get through this time, or build a better world for the future. It’s nothing more than reaction formation on a massive, and deeply unhealthy (individually and societally) scale. Y’all have got to stop it and live in the present, informed by the real past.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Chris says:

      Whenever people postulate “What would it look like to live in an authoritarian America?”, they always conuure up some bizarre Hunger Games or Red Dawn scenario.

      But of course the truth is, that for most of American history, only about 25% of its population actually lived in a free democracy, which the other 75% did live in an authoritarian regime.

      Until the second half of the 20th Century, that 75% either couldn’t vote, or were legally barred from owning property or having banking accounts or being able to travel freely or negotiate for fair wages or faced a host of other restrictions which kept them from being free to pursue happiness.

      If your idea of American history is Gunsmoke or Little House On The Prarie, then you are looking through a window into an authoritarian America, but you’re looking at it from the perspective of President Snow, not Katniss.Report

      • Chris in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        For sure. Part of mythmaking about America is building myths with which to contrast the American myth, whether those myths are loosely based on reality (as in much of the Cold War), or are entirely fiction (though the fiction is often said to be allegory for something in reality, or to reflect possibilities for non-American futures).Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Where are you getting this 75% couldn’t vote from? I agree with you about the good old days not being so good but your statistics seem way off even when you consider that women couldn’t vote nationally, but could in many Western states, until the 1920 election. African-Americans and other non-whites were a bit over ten percent of the population.Report

  10. LeeEsq says:

    I’m not even sure if the mid-20th century consensus was really a thing. Topics like civil rights, desegregation, and the size of the American welfare state were bitterly fought over. The mid-20th century had a decent plurality of Americans arguing even the meagerest liberal legislation was de facto communist. This was the time of the Birchers and Senator McCarthy. There was a bigger shared culture I guess but lots of sub-cultures on the Left and Right that the mainstream didn’t know about.Report

  11. North says:

    I’m going to preface these musings with a Woody Allen quote:
    “The whole country was tied together by radio. We all experienced the same heroes and comedians and singers. They were giants.”
    I think you touch on this this when you talk about social media but I think that gives far too much credit to social media itself. The seeds for the dissolution of the Big Tent were sowed when we were kids. There was cable news. Then came the internet. Social media is just the cherry on top of the modern dissolution sundae. We used to have a limited number of pop hit songs because gatekeepers in media sorted through them. Now we have the internet, youtube et all and entertainment is slowly, relentlessly, returning to its troubadour roots with individuals curating their own lists of songs they like. They aren’t even imprisoned to individual artists any more. Replicate this model across every field of interest. We have so many more choices now, tailored to our individual wants. No, we don’t have to settle for a few dozen songs to choose from anymore. We have every song that’s ever been made at out fingertips and hundreds more are being manufactured every day. And it’s a good thing.

    And, yeah, we don’t have to settle for the community we happened to be born into anymore. We can connect with each other around the world and find our own communities. We can eventually physically escape the communities we were born into and go to ones that suit us better. Yeah, we have more choices than one now. That is a VERY good thing.

    Oscar commented above that he expected commenters to observe about how some demographics, various minorities most likely, were never part of the big tent you’re mourning. Let me take the opportunity to meet his expectation. Some minorities were never part of the “Big Tent” and it fishing sucked for them. The old Big Tent was a crushing, stultifying thing if you didn’t match its parameters. I’m about your age Dennis, early forties, and I only really experienced the trailing edge of the Big Tent as its power waned but I know from first hand experience that it sucked. For people like us in the preceding generation the Big Tent didn’t just suck- it killed, it maimed and it tormented.

    So now we just need a bigger tent. Happily, it seems to me like liberalism as it’s widely understood is fully capable of handling that task. I know that conservatives are always on about the end of liberalism and point to the post liberal left as the “successor ideology” but I am unpersuaded. It is not the post liberal left that can elect their leaders to the head of one of our countries two national parties (They can barely elect a handful of congresscritters); it’s not the post liberal left that can send armed men storming into the capital to try and overturn elections. The left never fails to disappoint conservatives and I have zero doubt it’ll fail to slay liberalism. That’s good news for all of us but bad news for conservatives because the only plan they seem to have these days is to hype up the post liberal left and hope that everyone will be so scared of that overinflated specter that they’ll meekly line up to return to the old order.

    But people won’t. It’ll never work. There’s a disparity of passion on the respective sides. Conservatives think it’d be nice if the old Big Tent returned to power but liberals know it’d be awful. And as for the minorities? Speaking for myself I’d fight against it with everything I have.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to North says:

      I’ll add that much like the labor market right now, the big tent isn’t dead, but it is re-organizing to be more inclusive. Unfortunately there is no central authority capable of making it an orderly re-org, so like a market, it will have to sort itself out, which is going to take time. Quite a bit of time. It’s a big tent, after all.

      PS Per my reply to Doctor Jay, Trolls and maximalists make things more difficult.Report

      • North in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        I agree and I think the new big tent will be a significant improvement on the old one and, I suspect, it’ll be something conservatives won’t like much.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to North says:

      “We used to have a limited number of pop hit songs because gatekeepers in media sorted through them. Now we have the internet, youtube et all and entertainment is slowly, relentlessly, returning to its troubadour roots with individuals curating their own lists of songs they like.”

      This is quickly becoming one of my soapboxes.

      When I was growing up and “The Simpsons” was on Thursday nights, you’d walk in to school on Friday morning and all everyone was talking about was last night’s episode and pity you if you had missed it.

      Now the kids talk about their favorite YouTubers but most of them have never even heard of their friends’ favorites because despite living in the same town and going to the same school and having lots of overlapping interests, they all have different inputs into THE ALGORITHM so they have different curated experiences. And, as a result, popular media can’t be the unifying force it once was.

      Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it is A thing.

      Call it Me vs We. Sometimes, we are much more ME focused and sometimes we are much more WE focused and the pendulum seems to swing back and forth every few generations.

      There are benefits to both. Right now, we’re pretty heavy into the ME and the benefits there are that one kid can walk in with hair passed his shoulders and another kid can walk in with their hair died blue and another kid can walk in with cornrows and another kid can walk in with her head shaved and odds are none of those decisions impact their relationships with one another. That is a beautiful thing in a way.

      On the flip side, no one says, “Yo, did you see “The Simpsons” last night?!”

      No better. Not worse. But different. And with real-world implications.Report

  12. Michael Cain says:

    I don’t hide that I’m on a different side than Dennis, since I believe that we will continue to grow apart in various ways rather than coming together. I also believe that there will be concrete physical problems that result in a partition of the states. (Yes, lunatic fringe, you don’t have to tell me.) The book laying it all out is progressing very slowly.Report

  13. Jennifer Worrel says:

    Great piece.

    Best line: Politically pure cultures lead to inbreeding and that leads to a lower form of discourse, one that is not only dumb but mean.Report