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The winner of the Presidential Election this coming November will determine which party holds the Presidency during the 250th<\/sup> Anniversary of America\u2019s independence from Britain. Back in the 1970s was a time of high inflation and when social mores were collapsing with perversity and decay (both real and imagined) with a perceived radicalization of the political parties combined with weakness being felt in international affairs\u2014conditions that many would say America faces now. Yet in 1976, during a contentious Presidential race run in the shadow of malfeasance from the White House and military defeat abroad where crime was skyrocketing and inflation ran rampant, America was able to come together to celebrate the Bicentennial and the \u201cSpirit of \u201876\u201d.<\/p>\n In two years time, when we celebrate another milestone birthday for America, could we ever hope to have such widespread unity and outpouring of patriotism and unity\u2014or are we doomed to an America divided in twain with each side being treated as \u201cthe other\u201d by the opposite side, with each side claiming itself to be the real America defending itself from \u201cthe other\u201d.<\/p>\n There has long been forces and ideologies, of foreign import, trying to fundamentally transform America. Though they vary, these belief systems are at the very least intellectual \u201ckissin\u2019 cousins<\/a>\u201d. Those who push to supplant if not outright replace that American essence <\/em>that has made America so exceptional in world history are indeed a minority, but that does not mean that those who oppose that minority are only targeting that minority.<\/p>\n In many ways, that transformational<\/em> minority had far less opposition, if any, fifty if not much more than they do today. It may seem that things are worse off only because the ablative armor of our social mores and societal standards hadn\u2019t bee worn away yet. Instead of seeing an establishment of a coherent opposition<\/a> and the slowing down, if not outright reversal, of the broader strokes of the minority radical Left and the fundamentals of society, they see what that thin remnant of ablative social armor was up against and lash out against what to them is a sudden threat to their sense of superficial normalcy.<\/p>\n Much of American society has changed in the past fifty or even hundred years, just as it has before and will do so in the future. It has changed because of that transformational<\/em> influence both negatively as well as positively and people responded to this fundamental transformation<\/em> and fought to conserve<\/em> those core values of America.<\/p>\n American have always had their differences of opinion and belief, even within a unifying Patriotism and love of America. This day and age is no different. But increasingly on the Right, there is less of a feeling towards emphasizing how the radical Left is wrong and then try to win over many moderate median voters or even those left-of-center who are not<\/em> radical hard-Left ideologs, and more of an easier and lucrative path of emphasizing a superficial normalcy as the \u201ctrue\u201d or \u201creal\u201d America by exacerbating sub-cultural<\/em> differences with other Americans to manichean levels of madness.. The consequence o this is to define the enemy not as the radical Left ideologue minority, but anyone who is outside an increasingly narrower definition of \u201cnormal\u201d.<\/p>\n This over-simplified view can often bee result in valid criticisms from anyone considered more of an outsider as an attack from one of them<\/em> against one an us<\/em>, with a blind and almost histrionic defense of what is being criticized. The examples for this are manifest.<\/p>\n One of the most notable examples was the criticism by Kevin Williamson on more rural White communities where drug use and associated crime, social decay, and fatherlessness are increasingly rampant. The criticism isn\u2019t that different from many of the similar issues raised when it came to Black ghettos or inner cities which drew ire from the Left who identified with said inner cities over the elitists<\/em> critical thereof. Nor is it much different from the veritable Ben Shapiro\u2019s 3 rules for not falling into poverty.<\/p>\n Those previous criticisms did not raise much of an issue from the vast majority on the right, or even from many on the Left such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan half-a-century ago. \u00a0 Why? Because those were criticism of the other<\/em> who were on the opposite side of of the us <\/em>vs. them<\/em> divide, and thus culturally antipodal to them.<\/p>\n But Williamson\u2019s did. \u00a0 Again, why? Because those he was criticizing suddenly fell on this side<\/em> of said us <\/em>vs. them<\/em> divide culturally. That is not to say those who took umbridge were supportive of fatherless homes filled with methheads, but because the person they saw doing the criticizing was seen, relatively, as a more distant other<\/em> (and thus elitist<\/em>) then the ones who were being criticized, who were seen as being much closer. Not so different than some well-off urbanite or \u201cbleeding heart\u201d moderate in the suburbs. In both cases, those who most strongly defended those being criticized were largely free themselves of the negatives that were being criticized, and, ironically to some, those who most strongly took umbrage tended to embody the other sides proffered solutions on how to improve the conditions and communities of those who were criticized.<\/p>\n Indeed, such criticism and pointing out of problems and what needed to be addressed was seen not only as a vicious attack by some lofty uncaring elite, but an attack by an oppressor looking for a reason to sweep undesirables aside\u2014a criticism by many on the Left towards Republicans during the Reagan era of the 1980s. The flip side is also true: Many people who would feel sympathy for people living in such predominantly White rural areas are offput by the knee-jerk defense thereof, just as many who criticized Black inner city ghettos were offput by the knee-jerk defense of those places and people.<\/p>\n There are more recent examples of this us<\/em> vs. them<\/em> outlook taken so gently and casually towards a manichean stance than many people who take sides don\u2019t even realize that rather than attacking a few elite, they are othering<\/em> great swaths of America (even if for political or social reasons they won\u2019t contemplate that). Two recent songs from last year serve to highlight this.<\/p>\n The first example is \u201cRich Men North of Richmond\u201d. That song attacks elites (real of perceived) in the Northern Virginia suburbs and in urban (and perhaps even suburban) elitist areas to the north of the the singers community, which stands in contrast to the others<\/em> he sings about. \u00a0 Again, there is a divide drawn, with the emphasis of who aren’t<\/em> the \u201crich men north of Richmond\u201d being poverty stricken people who come home to drink alcohol and blame their situation on said \u201crich men north of Richmond\u201d. If that is the us<\/em> in the us<\/em> vs. them<\/em> divide that the song established, then those who are sufficiently different from the song\u2019s POV character are implicitly lumped in with the others<\/em> being attacked in the song. This is an example where the other<\/em> is at least in part defined as being outside the sub-cultural<\/em> community norms if the \u201creal\u201d or \u201ctrue\u201d American folk.<\/p>\n Another examples, this time intentionally obnoxious, was the \u201cTry That In A Small Town\u201d song which squarely put the dividing line as the \u201cthem\u201d<\/em> of anyone not<\/em> from a small town, and thus lumped in with with the rioters and looters of Leftist \u201cprotests\u201d or at least tolerant of said rioters\/looters, while anyone from a \u201csmall town\u201d is declared a beleaguered \u201cus\u201d<\/em> that the others<\/em> dare to criticize as anything but pure and wonderful! The enemy, then, is everyone<\/em> who isn\u2019t from a \u201csmall town\u201d or culturally connects therewith; those who are, thus, become sacrosanct no matter how horrible they are or what damage to society they do.<\/p>\n This demonization of Americans, who are more different than similar, as the root of all evil that threatens the deionizers is something that both Left and Right are not only capable of, but increasingly eager to engage in. This gets to the point where their fellow Americans are considered the only threat to America, and that hostile foreign powers must<\/em> be victims of the machinations of other Americans<\/em> since no foreign power sits so squarely on America\u2019s purported political or cultural antipode! Fifty years ago, the hard Left blamed America first<\/em>, and now we are seeing the post-conservative \u201cNew\u201d Right plagiarizing the old Left by blaming America First\u2122<\/em>!<\/p>\n This manichean divide is also seen as a knee-jerk anti-\u201celitism\u201d, where many on the Right feel like the popular high school jocks hating the high school nerds that now rule over them. Of course, many of the people most heavily pushing are social media trolls looking for attention. But this is an example of a parochial provincialism that separates out their more familiar, and thus \u201cnormal\u201d, communities from those Americans who are different and thus \u201cthe other<\/em>\u201d in a readily dividable and understandable way. \u00a0 This anti-elitism becomes an attack on all institutions and sources of authority that they do not themselves find familiar and thus \u201cnormal\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n Rather than oppose the cooption of colleges or professional associations, and fight to reclaim those sources of learning and authority, there is an increasing sentiment that those things are irredeemable<\/a> and those associated with them being irrevocably tainted as \u201cthe other<\/em>\u201d, and thusly can and ought to be outright dissolved since they don\u2019t directly affect \u201cus<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n