{"id":225689,"date":"2020-12-19T07:32:22","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T13:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bartholomewstjames.com\/?p=225689"},"modified":"2023-09-15T21:03:32","modified_gmt":"2023-09-16T02:03:32","slug":"the-circus-that-never-leaves-town-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bartholomewstjames.com\/the-circus-that-never-leaves-town-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Circus that Never Leaves Town"},"content":{"rendered":"
One of the reasons we are forced to narrow our view of the world in order to make it a more comfortable place to live, is that our minds and bodies have not kept up with the massive changes we have exposed them to, especially over the past century.<\/p>\n
As a result, features such as our fight\/flight reaction and other physiological attributes are no longer ways of keeping us healthy and alive. Instead, they are making many of us sick, by causing toxic levels of anxiety over issues that are not life threatening, and may not even be all that dangerous. And that is because we are still reacting to a world that no longer exists, and in ways our tribal ancestors would have \u2013 ways that were often created to help preserve the safety and integrity of the tribe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile we live in a world that is far too complex to function within the such simplistic and tribal political confines.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Those tribal ways of looking at our world have become totally obsolete.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As my main character Charlie Wyatt explains, those tribal\/nationalistic ways of looking at ourselves, our relationships, and our world, have become totally obsolete:<\/p>\n \u201cAfter all, how can we continue to think that way, when we can no longer live our entire lives within our own little world, with each of our tribes in its own little valley? We now live in a global age \u2013 with a global economy and a global climate and a global culture, creating a single solitary global world.\u201d<\/p>\n That is why we feel our political institutions are failing us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That reality is likely why many of us now feel that our political and other institutions are failing us. Which itself points to one more aspect of our world which Trump has not only exposed, but exploited \u2013 and in a very big way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Because it seems pretty clear the Republican party is no longer the party it once was. It is now Trump\u2019s party. And Trump, as a political actor, has become a force unto himself. As a result, the kinds of issues Americans face in the political realm are not so much about border security or COVID-19 or any other external threat to the nation. The issue is Trump. And the partisan dividing line is Trump. So it is not so much one party versus another, or one point of view versus another. It is Trump versus anti-Trump.<\/strong><\/p>\n Which means the institutions we once relied upon for resolving our political disputes are no longer in a position to do that, certainly not in the way they might have a few decades ago. And they may never be in that position again \u2013 not when you consider the direction the country and the world have been heading in recent years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Politics as we now know it is primarily being practiced on the platforms of social media.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In part that is because politics as we now know it is not being practiced in the halls of congress. Instead, it is being practiced on the platforms of social media.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That is where the so-called arguments are being laid out and opinions formed, because that is where the most influential debate is taking place. And as a result, that is where even our politicians look to determine their thinking on the issues \u2013 if not their approach to politics as a whole.<\/p>\n Which means it is mainly the nature of those platforms and the tenor of the discussions they generate, that have created the no-compromise, no-deal-making kind of politics that now dominates congress, and increasingly parliaments and other political forums around the world.<\/p>\n If the medium is the message, the message of our social <\/i>media is anger, hatred, chaos and dysfunction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n