[Craic] The Four Americas - George Packer

[Allan Baker]

The Four Americas

By George Packer – Atlantic Magazine – July / August, 2021 

The July / August edition of The Atlantic contains a very interesting, 13 page analysis, of the current divisions in America – going beyond the conventional left / right or Democrat / Republican. I found it to be an in-depth sociological / political analysis of America today. 

 George Packer, a frequent writer in The Atlantic, identifies four narratives, or tribes, as:


1.    Free America

2.    Smart America

3.    Real America, and

4.    Just America.

In his conclusion, Packer writes:

“All four of the narratives I’ve described emerged from America’s failure to sustain and enlarge the middle-class democracy of the postwar years. They all respond to real problems. Each offers a value that the others need and lacks ones that the others have. Free America celebrates the energy of the unemcumbered individual. Smart America respects intelligence and welcomes change. Real America commits itself to a place and has a sense of limits. Just America demands a confrontation with what the others want to avoid. They rise from a single society, and even in one as polarized as ours they continually shape, absorb, and morph into one another. But their tendency is also to divide us, pitting tribe against tribe. These divisions impoverish each narrative into a cramped and ever more extreme version of itself.”

The whole article can be accessed (I hope ) at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/ <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/>
 Stay hopeful;

Allan
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