Prattville Dragoons SCV Camp 1524 Commander's Column for April 2022 – Polarization of America as Reflected in Social Media Engagement

I read one of those advice columns recently where a mother asked if her daughter was wise in dumping her boyfriend when she learned he voted for Donald Trump.  Responses ranged from a resounding affirmative to one person saying that the boyfriend “dodged a bullet”.  It reminded me of some such odd couples like political analysts Mary Matalin and James Carville who are far right and left (respectively) on political issues.  Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway was married to a man who was a member of an anti-Trump Republican group called The Lincoln Project.   Both couples are still married.  But, this also reminds me of the old adage that marriages often fail due to conflicts around money, religion, sex and, politics. 

Nonetheless, the success and longevity of those political power couples’ marriages are surely a product of a maturity in being able to separate these disagreements  from priorities on which they base their union.  But the polarization of American society today would seemingly threaten such relationships which don’t agree on such basic tenants.  The two political parties have become reflections of the morality, ethics and conservatism or progressivism of the country’s society especially in regards to platforms and endorsements regarding right to life or choice, sexual orientation, and racial issues like affirmative action, diversity and critical race theory.  I cannot personally conceive how a couple could have a strong lasting relationship and disagree on such current political issues. 

This polarization is also reflected in social media interaction where people friend and like those largely within their social sphere and echo chambers.  A recent post commemorating April as Confederate History and Heritage month brought a reaction by thousands using vulgarities and posting white flags of surrender and images of the WBTS and western American Indian scorched earth terrorist William Tecumseh Sherman and a regurgitation of the slavery-was-the-cause-of-secession-and-the-Civil-War narrative.  It is hypocritical and ignorant to hitch your position of greater morality around the neck of Sherman and not acknowledge what he did to the Southern civilian populace allowing his troops to rape, pillage and burn their way to the sea and later to eradicate the buffalo on which the plains Indians depended for their way of life as well as his “extermination and relocation of thousands of indigenous people”.  (https://www.history.com/news/shermans-war-on-native-americans)  These same ignorant people decry the wicked Southern plantation owners without recognizing the millions of Southerners who took up arms to protect their homes and families who never owned a slave.  These same phony people decry the slavery of the 17-19th centuries ignoring the Africans who instigated and profited from the slave trade and who continue it to this day.   These are the same types of folks who stand on their soapbox condemning the Saudi Arabians as murderous butchers when they seek to establish a professional golf league to challenge the PGA on which they are profiting themselves, all the while filling up their cars with gasoline from Arabian crude. 

So they grandstand and puff out their chests with their self-perceived moral superiority but, why the venomous and militantly aggressive responses?  No one likes to be wrong and when they have sounded loudly from the rooftops or across the internet their false doctrine and beliefs, they defend it with rage.  The 100-character limits on the internet posts encourage click-bait responses and quick derogatory unilateral debate.   No dialogue.  No need for first person source references or historical quotes to support your position.   Lemmings will run off the cliff before they recognize the error of their ways.  This pertains to an admission of poor judgement in who you voted for or belief in the infallibility of the medical community in regards to vaccinations and government pandemic mandates or error in a perception and understanding of historical truths.  A herd mentality.  They cling to their political correctness which is preached to them by their schools, their employers, their churches and oftentimes their own families.    90% of Americans have been educated in the public school system.  An indoctrination by the government school in the historical faultlessness of that very government yields a close-mindedness to any alternative possibility.   All else is a conspiracy.  As General Patrick Cleburne warned, "Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy, that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; learn from Northern school books their version of the war, and taught to regard our gallant dead as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects of derision."  And so it is.