# How Can The US Heal Its Deep Divisions? How Did It Do So Previously? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 29, 2021, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832 "2021-12-29T04:40:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/21 "2021-12-29T20:37:10Z")
Sounds to me like someone hasn’t looked into it deeply enough. It definitely is a repackage of Marxism (neo-Marxism actually), and even some of its advocates admit this. It’s fine for a silly college class (like studying actual Marxism)…it’s not suitable for anything else. The point, however, is that it’s a good example of deep division in this country…especially your knee-jerk reaction to it by demonizing anyone critical of it in such terms. And the alternative where it’s this huge thing being painted by the right as indicative of how the left is taking over the entire system. It is a microcosm of the divisions happening right now, though far from the only one. It will be interesting to see how the left and right blow themselves apart over this crap, and where we will be as a society when it’s done and we move on to the next battlefield. To paraphrase the 300…THIS…IS…THE USA!! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/22 "2021-12-29T20:42:04Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > I’m not pining for the Good Ol’ Days, which were not, in reality, so good. The internet has given voice and a sense of community to many people who would otherwise have been silent and lonely. I could not have predicted how it has splintered our shared sense of reality and our common, complex identity. Yeah, same here. One would think that with the worlds (or entire civilizations) information at the fingertips of basically everyone that it would not have devolved into this cluster fuck, but…I guess in hindsight it’s not that surprising. We are dealing…as we have in the past…with rapid technological change that our society has yet to adapt to. And once we adapt, I’m sure there will be more changes happen, so we never, quite, catch up. But we can’t exactly put that genie back in the bottle, and I’m not convinced that would be a good idea regardless. As you say, the good old days weren’t actually very good. I guess my own point in this is that this sort of division in the US has pretty much been with us since the founding, and the inflection points where things come to a head are cyclical…happening periodically. We are simply coming to another one in the next decade or so (or maybe the next year or so…sometime soonish, anyway). But we’ve been here before, and we will be here again…IMHO and all (even though this is MPSIMS 😉 ). ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/23 "2021-12-29T20:43:43Z")
> [@XT](#): > > CRT is anti-science horseshit…it is, essentially, Marxism repackaged with race instead of class being cut and pasted in. Nah. This is what people think when they get most of their news from garbage media sources. > [@XT](#): > > nd the right has made it the big boogie man as well, as you said to sow distrust of our entire education system as if CRT has infiltrated every part, instead of a few places where over-eager lefties have tried to push it in. There are no “few places where over-eager lefties have tried to push it in.” This belief, again, is a sign of some bad media consumption habits. CRT is a theoretical framework for understanding law. If your kid is being taught CRT, congratulations on your third-year law student. The concept of CRT that you’ve bought is a branding exercise invented by the right-wing outrage machine. They took an obscure academic theory, shoved in all their racial grievances under it, and started a moral panic (that you have been duped by). [Here is one of the architects](https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1371540368714428416?lang=en) openly explaining how the CRT scam works. > [@Christopher Rufo](#): > > We have successfully frozen their brand—“critical race theory”—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. He knows it’s fake. The conservative elites know it’s fake. Most everybody except the most benighted rubes understand that it’s fake. They don’t care because they’re not interested in truth, they just want a bloody flag to wave and follow. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/24 "2021-12-29T20:52:06Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > How did it recover from past instances when the country was also very divided? To the extent that we “recovered”, it was by decisive military force that showed there was no hope in defying the federal government. What happened after that is the separatists and racists largely withdrew from public discourse. But they didn’t go away. Their grievances simmered and festered out of sight, and came roaring back the next time white privilege was on the chopping block (the Civil Rights movement). A federal government show of force helped quell that dispute as well, but the divisions never went away. They just hid under the surface. The US has always been an ill-fitting marriage of white supremacists and everyone else. We’ve always been pretending there could be a compromise between the two, ignoring the fact that the white supremacists don’t compromise and can only be governed at gunpoint. It’s a huge mistake that the South became full-fledged states again. They should have permanently been a US territory with no more political power than Puerto Rico or Samoa. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/25 "2021-12-29T20:54:17Z")
NM…probably too close to the edge with this, and really pointless to discuss this further. Ado. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/26 "2021-12-29T21:19:02Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I think reducing the amount of gerrymandering would help. Many or most House members are in districts that are safely Republican or safely Democratic, so they have no reason to appeal to the other side. If more districts were competitive, there might be more cooperation? I think this is unlikely to help significantly. The Senate isn’t gerrymandered at all, and it’s nearly as partisan as the House. Most of what generates “safe” seats is geographical self-sorting by the population, not gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is bad, but the division in the US is primarily driven by cultural conflict, not political structure. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/27 "2021-12-29T21:29:54Z")
I don’t think we can heal the divide and I don’t think we healed previous divides. We are two separate cultures with different and diametrically opposed value systems. In the past, we “healed” these divides by just ignoring them and letting the worst elements of society run wild as long as they kept it in their states and the rest of white America didn’t have to hear too much about it. We turned a blind eye to Lynchings and Jim Crow for as long as we could and then we did the bare minimum to get the blacks settled down without upsetting white racists too much. We put up with conservative America bombing federal buildings, abortion clinics and the Olympics in the interest of just getting along. Now, that the demographics have shifted enough that what people of color think and feel actually matters in America, there is no way to reconcile their demand to be treated as humans with a culture that does not see them as fully human. Our choice is between some kind of managed dissolution or collapse. Because America never does the hard thing, it will be collapse. There will never be a president that is accepted by both blue and red America and we will lurch between the two, each one trying to undo the work of the other side as we fall farther and farther behind. Oh, and we never did anything about climate change, so those tensions will add further fuel to the fire. I’m glad I never had kids. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/28 "2021-12-29T21:38:40Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Sounds to me like someone hasn’t looked into it deeply enough. It definitely is a repackage of Marxism (neo-Marxism actually), and even some of its advocates admit this. It’s fine for a silly college class (like studying actual Marxism)…it’s not suitable for anything else. Once more: there is no repackaged Marxism being taught in public schools. If you think there is, you’re either ignorant of what is being taught in school, of what Marxism is, of both, or you’re being purposefully disingenuous. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/29 "2021-12-29T21:56:09Z")
> [@XT](#): > > So, anti-CRT is about ignorance and those who don’t want their children educated? Interesting viewpoint…especially in light of this discussion. It’s interesting to see how both sides support anti-science horseshit while demonizing the other side for…supporting anti-science horseshit. I am genuinely shocked by your posts in this thread. I’ve always considered you at least somewhat reasonable if not a little bit too “both sides” centrism, but based on your posts in this thread you sound like someone who drank the Tucker Carlson kool-aid or something. You’re missing the whole point about CRT. When the right wing echo chamber refers to CRT, they aren’t actually talking about CRT, which is an advanced theory that involves academic discussion in law school and sociology. They’re talking about any effort to educate our children that this country has historically and still has systemic (and other) biases that affect minority groups. They’ve created CRT as a boogeyman and then conflated any sort of realistic, basic education about race in this country (like that black people have historically got the shaft) as being about CRT. It’s a cultural wedge issue, the sort that they like to use to rile up their base. It’s basically “the war on Christmas” (ie bullshit that makes people feel like they’re somehow the victims due to increasing inclusiveness and keeps them outraged) applied to teaching people realistically about the ugly history of race and minority status in the US. The people who once enforced segregation don’t want their children and grandchildren being taught about segregation. They want to push this unrealistic vision of this country onto their kids, absolve their own guilt of creating that situation, and de-legitimize the struggles that minorities still face in this country. The fact that you label CRT as an example of a _leftist_ attempt to divide the country shows the insanity of your “both sides” positions. The CRT boogeyman was created by the right in order to confuse people and create a “culture war” battleground. All people on the left want to do is educate people about the reality-based history in our country and discrimination that minority groups have faced. No reasonable person can really disagree with that. You basically used a manufactured right-wing culture war issue among dozens of other right wing culture war issues to demonstrate that both sides are causing discord, undercutting your own point massively. If you can honestly think, after what we’ve seen in the last 5 years, that divisiveness is equally created by both sides, then you’ve completely lost any sort of credibility as a non-partisan. When one side goes off the deep end, and the other side does not, then necessarily they will have a lot in conflict. But that doesn’t mean that their positions have equal merit, or that they are equally based in reality, or that both sides are equally guilty of creating the division between them. Essentially, here’s what you sound like: "Round earthers think that flat earthers are stupid. And flat earthers think round earthers are stupid. They both think the same thing about each other and don’t even realize that makes them the same! The extremists on both sides are driving division between us! Of course I, as a person who is above making partisan judgements about whether the earth is round or flat, am above that and can see that both sides are equally guilty of pushing their own agenda and being blind to their own flaws" ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/30 "2021-12-29T22:00:26Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > I am genuinely shocked by your posts in this thread. I’ve always considered you at least somewhat reasonable if not a little bit too “both sides” centrism, but based on your posts in this thread you sound like someone who drank the Tucker Carlson kool-aid or something. I had much the same thought. If anything in this thread demonstrates how bad the situation we find ourselves in is, it is the fact that a once reasonable poster like XT has so deeply fallen down this BS rabbithole. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2021, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/31 "2021-12-29T22:21:50Z")
He’s just virtue signalling his conservative credentials. Calling it anti-science is a massive tipoff. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2021, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/32 "2021-12-30T00:48:53Z")
Setting aside the difficulties of healing divides, what theoretical steps would have to happen? 1. There must be continued respect for the political process, agreement on rules and rule of law. 2. There must be sone incentive to compromise with other parties, possibly from mixed districts. 3. There must be very broad agreement on what values and goals are worthwhile. This often happens in practice through new generations achieving power rather than persuading older ones. 4. There might be a common challenge to unite against or deal with. 5. We can all agree on the delicious taste of steak, fried chicken and Cheezy Snacks. Except for a few contrarians. Is there anything we can all agree on? ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2021, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/33 "2021-12-30T03:39:44Z")
Just to point out that the 60’s was hugely polarized. I was just a kid but the protests in the streets, Viet Nam war, draft, Richard M Nixon’s secret enemies list, etc. It was a very divided time, and not necessarily less divided than now. Although black people still being persecuted, and righty tighties want to make abortion illegal while blocking and sort support once the kid leaves the womb. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2021, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/34 "2021-12-30T04:11:24Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > I was just a kid but the protests in the streets, Viet Nam war, draft, Richard M Nixon’s secret enemies list, etc. It was a very divided time, and not necessarily less divided than now. Strongly disagree. I grew up in that time period and well remember the deep divisions. As I said in my earlier post, we at least had a shared reality. That is NOT the case now. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2021, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/35 "2021-12-30T04:14:27Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > Strongly disagree. I grew up in that time period and well remember the deep divisions. As I said in my earlier post, we at least had a shared reality. That is NOT the case now. Fair point. There was a shared reality in the 60’s. Some thought it was fucked up and needed to change, the others wanted to fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo. It is definately true that there is a marked lack of shared reality now. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2021, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/36 "2021-12-30T04:57:46Z")
> [@wolfman](#): > > 1. The Threat of War. > 2. War > 3. The Threat of the return of War > 4. The threat of foreign war > 5. Foreign War > 6. The Threat of Foreign War. > 7. Foreign War. > 8. The Threat of Nuclear war. > 9. The assumption that War and Nuclear war are no longer a threat. > 10. Idiocy, bullshit , Trump and rejection of reality is a paradigm that was never been faced, and has no relevance regarding the solutions of the past. Pretty much. Historically I get the impression that times of national unity (like the early and mid 20th century) were times when all sides tacitly agreed to support white supremacy. I think whether the country is getting along fundamentally comes down to a couple of major points 1. Does everyone agree with white supremacy and is the social power structure being unchallenged? 2. Do we have an external enemy to focus on? Having both those things sadly seems necessary for national unity. Right now neither is true. Having a black president really drove home how white supremacy is being challenged, which kicked the domestic insurgency into overdrive. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2021, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/37 "2021-12-30T20:16:26Z")
I don’t understand the love for country; the whole nation-state thing in most places was little more than a way to consolidate territory for economic gain for the rich and the wannabe rich. It had little to do with the aspirations of a people; heck, even places like Italy, Germany, France, and Canada have deep, long-standing divisions. If the nation-state were an outflow of people’s sentiments and interests, governments wouldn’t need to spend so much time gassing on about patriotism and what it “really” means to be an Italian, German, etc. My own fondness for Canada gets boiled down to fond childhood memories of very specific places and people, not some sense of “Canadianess.” And I suspect if I had been born 30 miles south, I would have a similar fondness through an American lens. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2021, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/38 "2021-12-30T20:30:12Z")
I agree with your strong disagreement. In fact I think a big reason we are in this state is because of old white people insisting things aren’t as bad as they obviously are. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2021, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/39 "2021-12-30T20:46:03Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > It didn’t. These issues you see today are still the echoes of unresolved issues from 1865. How so? At the very least, they’ve gotten worse compared to the good old days, which weren’t all that long ago. It certainly seems to me that things were better when I was a kid in the Reagan era than my dad had it growing up in the Eisenhower years. In those days he was told by teachers not to speak Spanish in school, had experiences with being told that a particular business wouldn’t serve Hispanics, and such. I didn’t experience any of that in the 80s, growing up in the same town. Fast forward to the Obama years, and things seemed even better, at least from my perspective, with greater acceptance for religious minorities including Muslims and atheists, LGBT people, and even less racism than there was in the Reagan years. Now it seems like we’ve gone backwards. ETA: If asked I’d be unable to pinpoint an exact event that triggered, this, but I think we were, as a society, still making progress even after Trump’s election. I think our regression started somewhere around 2019, and it could very well be that all the things that went along with COVID-19 made things worse. It could also be the passing of RBG and the subsequent ramming through of ACB to the SCOTUS, although that may have just been a consequence of things. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2022, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832/40 "2022-01-09T20:42:28Z")
Instead of making a snarky speech about Trump, Biden should’ve ridden on horseback over to RCC headquarters with the Capitol police force, and ordered a respectful salute to his fallen foes. Hey, it worked for Col. Chamberlain at Appomattox. > [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > There has been handwringing over the deep divisions in American society and concern for the future. Huh, and I didn’t think you Canadians cared. 😢 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-us-heal-its-deep-divisions-how-did-it-do-so-previously/956832.md?page=3)