It’s crazy how quickly a country can change.

25 years ago Americans could still be called “THE” Americans as if they were all united by the same culture. A diverse population, of course, but who lived together quite well.

Today, in just one generation, there has been an explosion.

We know that Americans are binary: it’s Yes or No, White or Black, there is no gray. This trait contributed to their success by making their decisions easier and faster. But today the Yes and the No coexist and oppose each other. Polarization is everywhere: tension is increasing between whites and blacks, rich and poor, and young and old, and even men and women mistrust each other, and above all Democrats and Republicans despise each other and no longer cooperate. Dialogue has become impossible.

This phenomenon is not only American. France is evolving in the same direction. We no longer recognize each other. It is as if individuals had stopped processing the information they receive and swallowing it without chewing. Critical thinking is numbed and information (or propaganda) goes directly to the memory without going through a processing phase. They have abandoned critical thinking to the media especially social media who are now thinking for them. It is remarkable to see highly educated people stuck in opinions that one would not imagine they could have, totally deaf to contradiction, keeping their ears completely blocked.

25 years ago marketing could make us choose one yogurt over another. Today political marketing makes us vote for one candidate over another. In the past marketing created messages that addressed large sections of the population. Today it is targeting each individual with a message specific to their psychological profile pumped from social networks with all of its preferences and written by an increasingly skillful AI. As a result, to be elected, a politician cannot anymore give a single speech because he must multiply the promises by as many voters as he is trying to rally. As all these promises are  incompatible, he uses social media which allows him to promise everything to one and the opposite to another without anyone knowing.

This change results in a big bump. Distrust and anger everywhere.

Even after following a major course of optimism, “Anne, my sister Anne, I don’t see any solution on the horizon.”

Hang in there kids, there’s going to be a bit of turbulence. But isn’t it in those moments that unity grows?

DonCarol