Terence Vent
November 6, 2017
The internet has created two sets of communities: One large, global, cooperative at times and combative at times familial community, and dozens of smaller, secretive, distrustful communities of ethnocentric separatists.
Here in America the so-called left isn’t all that liberal, but is actually buttressed by a larger center of generally literate, educated, and global-minded citizens who are frightened by Donald Trump. The right is not nearly as conservative by traditional standards as they usually are. They are buttressed by a larger center of generally white, generally less educated but NOT generally less wealthy people who are fearful of things they don’t understand.
The left has a specific fear – a man who has attacked anyone who disagreed with him from the start. A man who is now attacking the very institutions that make America the great country that it is today. The right has a more generalized fear, manifested in an emotional, hysterically negative reaction to the democratic presidential candidate. The evidence against this candidate isn’t specific, but vague and accusatory.
These sorts of campaigns are going on all over the world, with the most prominent example in England (called Brexit, which is a not-very-clever contraction of the words “British” and “Exit”). The Russian version of Trump famously threatened to nuke America if it didn’t elect Trump.
These nationalist, pull-into-themselves movements have – cumulatively – destabilized the western world to a point where war is exponentially more likely than at any time since the Vietnam era. The rest of the world will be following our nationalist-led election battle next Tuesday with interest, and no small amount of trepidation. Will we join the rest of the world, or pull away from it?
