Culture in Real Time
As I read it, culture is comprised of four things in increasing levels of significance: symbols, heroes, rituals and values. By that quite academic frame, it seems that as we parse out our differences in our current multi-cultural war in America, it is a fixation on the symbols that trip us up.
Dinners With Dead Gangsters — A Class War Notebook
Meanwhile in another house that capitalism built, the low-ceilinged “49er Bar” at the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico, local native dark-eyed women from the reservation gossip over sips of massive drinks at tables next to back-lit stained glass. The juke spins saccharine country in a loamy whisper while a stage, tidy and too well-lit for the rest of the place, bears a sign indicating that karaoke was just last evening. Absolutely nothing to do here but drink and be.
Anxiety is the thing that’s ripped our country apart. It has divided us, caused us to fear and hate those who think and live differently than us, and even caused us to hate those who only slightly disagree with us. It has led to panic and overreaction. And I worry that American Anxiety is only going to exacerbate the social and political divide in this country to the point that there is no coming back.