A few points:
First, you mentioned “…older values and traditions…” It seems like this concept is one that the political right likes to throw up in people’s faces but doesn’t really want to investigate too closely. When we really look into what older values and traditions suggest we may find that they are specific to the good old days when everyone was subjugated except the rich European elite. I’ve watched some on-the-street interviews with MAGA followers in which they were asked when they thought America was great. Their answers showed an astounding lack of knowledge about history and they often pointed to times when certain social benefits were enjoyed only to be told that they were referring to a period when a Democratic president and Congressional Democratic majority was running the country. Or they would point to Andrew Jackson’s reign. And, funny enough, 99 percent of those calling for older values and traditions would not have much freedom in a society returning to this skewed paradigm.
Next, you wrote, “…what’s needed here are sociological, historical, and existential perspectives that enable us to see past the partisans’ tribal defensiveness and their bogus conflict that fuels the social media conglomerates.” This mirror’s Joseph Campbell’s claim that we need a mythology for our time, because our society is bankrupt of mythology that could turn the mind inward in order to find greater meaning, enjoyment, and insight and thereby lift up everyone else in the process.
Next, it seems like we are in some sort of sped up mess heading for a cliff, and in the process of slowing down the runaway vehicle, both the left and right are wrestling even harder to depress the accelerator pedal.
Social media is a mixed bag of the wondrous and helpful as well as hideousness, debauchment, and degradation. Social media has exposed our societal ills while at the same time creating bigger ones. But who is to blame but a machine, a system running on its own? Social media in the hands of a sociopath named Donald Trump, has caused a very rapid decline in this nation. We don’t even have a pretense of a rudder or a ship at this point. All it took was for him to appeal, through his pathological lying, to people’s fears, insecurities, and pent up rage. And sensing a gold mine beneath his whining, lying, immorality, sexual abuses, and criminality, the wealthy elite see an even greater opportunity to further subjugate the masses. Trump is a patsy in his own game. The wokeness movement feeds their scheme to further their “old values and traditions.”
As I see it, these are confusing times seemingly powered by forces that we have never encountered. But people remain the same as they always have, and so too do the ways they can be manipulated, angered, united, and divided. Those who had no problem watching Nazis march in Charlottesville and insurrectionists attempting to overthrow the government are now rallying for Israel (I wonder if they know that Israel is a Jewish state), and the ones calling for justice, right to life, and peace are siding with Palestinians to drive the Jews into the sea. We need a new flag with an image depicting Crazy.
You wrote, “…many who consider themselves progressive fail to see the injustices built into capitalism and consumerism…” So true, I know a number of people who are armchair liberals, espousing disgust for environmental abuses, Trump, Christian Nationalists, misogyny, racism, nuclear energy and weapons proliferation, and the right wing while doing their fair share of adding to the burden by way of their own consumerism, expensive gas guzzlers, watching endless violence on TV, and indifference to homelessness.
People do what people do: They act selfishly, out of fear, and selectively. No wonder why they want to believe that Jesus is coming back or that aliens are going to swoop in to save our world.
