shared American experience, a touchpoint that
touches all? In an age of fragmentation, what
might that mean?
It’s hardly news that many facets of American
life have splintered in recent years — not
only politically, but in an on-demand culture
swimming in social-media echo chambers,
endless news sources and confirmation biases
around every corner.
Now, tens of millions of Americans are facing the
same thing, yet in entirely different ways, and
deliberately avoiding each other in the process.
The unity that comes in the togetherness part of
shared experience — as when so many people
congregated in their own communities after
9/11 to mourn — is, for many, entirely absent.
It’s a contradiction: We, if a “we” is even possible
in such a diverse republic, are experiencing this
together — separately.
“What we’ve got is a situation where we’re
supposed to physically isolate, but we’re socially,
electronically connected in dramatically new
ways,” says Daniel F. Chambliss, a sociologist at
Hamilton College in upstate New York. “The trick
is, are they actually thinking of things in the
same way?”
Almost certainly not, at least not yet. There
is evidence so far — both philosophical and
practical — that these disruptive times are not a
mass uniter.
As of this weekend, cars with New York plates
were being stopped in Rhode Island and their
occupants directed into quarantine — hardly
a we’re-all-just-Americans moment. Some
Midwesterners are upset that the coasts aren’t
isolating enough. In Pennsylvania, the less-