The Uncivil War in the U.S.

What it has done to us, and what we can do about it.

While researching authors who only published one novel for my post on perfectionism, I came across this fascinating quote by Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell from 1936, referring to her own upbringing in Atlanta, Georgia:

“In fact, I heard everything in the world except that the Confederates lost the war. When I was 10 years old, it was a violent shock to learn that General Lee had been defeated. I didn’t believe it when I first heard it and I was indignant. I still find it hard to believe, so strong are childhood impressions.”

What an eye-opener for me.

Yes, I’d already known that misinformation was nothing new, existing long before the term “fake news” became a part of our current vocabulary.

Come to think of it, I was also already aware of other examples where children had been, or are currently being, indoctrinated in specific political, cultural, or religious beliefs.

What had never really occurred to me until I read Ms. Mitchell’s quote was the sudden awareness that, in the United States, the seeds of division had been sown and fertilized with misinformation centuries before today’s rampant spread of falsehoods on imposter websites and social media platforms, and long before former President Trump’s diatribes about the major media outlets.

I had mistakenly believed that the smokescreens generated by half-truths and out-and-out lies were byproducts of the internet, fostered by our willingness to share incomplete or incorrect snippets via social media without doing our due diligence — something I’d been as guilty of doing as the next guy.

But the Margaret Mitchell quote sounded exactly like “the Big Lie” regarding who actually won our 2020 presidential election. Fake news, insidious but prolific, has influenced humankind long before that. It just gets spread more quickly and easily now.

The Rise of Freedom of the Fake Press

According to an article in the Smithsonian Magazine, the birth of news misinformation in the U.S. coincided with that of a free, uncensored press. According to President John Adams, “There has been more new error propagated by the press in the last ten years than in a hundred years before 1798.”

Knowing human nature, this actually makes sense. While freedom from censorship allowed the unfettered exchange of ideas and the reporting of all events, it also resulted in the emergence of tabloids and yellow journalism, of sensationalism, and fictionalized “news stories.”

On the one side, the goal of the free press was to report what was happening at home, across the nation, and abroad; on the other, its primary aim was to influence public opinion in a way that would provoke division and outrage.

Sound familiar?

Truth or Consequences?

I remember when my stepdaughter first defended her anti-vaccination stance, years before the COVID pandemic. When anyone tried to point out the documented effectiveness of existing vaccines and their role in the extinction of certain diseases, she simply said, “It all depends on what you read.”

Even when the correlation between vaccines and autism was proven to be a myth, she — along with millions of others — dug in her heels.

While I struggled with how someone as smart and educated as my stepdaughter could embrace what I considered to be such a dangerous viewpoint, I also began to understand how falsehoods of this kind work.

First comes the birth of the misleading story, which contains enough logic and substantiation to be plausible. Laced with personal experiences intended to elicit the deepest fears in its readers, the story gets freely passed along to others who would most likely identify with its unsubstantiated message, and experience the same anxiety regarding it.

As a significant number of people begin to espouse the inaccurate information, those of us on the side of “truth” try to vigorously point out how wrong they are. We create labels, such as “anti-vaxxers,” to categorize them, and we pommel them with links to “real’ data.

This only tends to force those we are trying to save from misinformation into groups where they feel accepted and supported, joining other people who also feel besieged, and who contribute additional testimonials in order to prove that they are on the right side of this increasing schism.

Herein lies the true danger of misinformation: it divides entire populations into two opposing camps, weakening the whole and, as a result, leaving us vulnerable to attack. Both internal and external.

Whose Side Are You On?

Whether consciously or not, Former President Donald Trump mastered this form of division.

Unlike Adolf Hitler before him and Vladimir Putin today, Trump did not have to control the media messaging in order to bisect the country.

All he needed was to sow seeds of doubt regarding the integrity of the mainstream media, the support of at least one major media outlet, direct communication with his supporters via social media, and an uncanny ability to tap into cultural fissures that already existed, busting them wide open. Right versus left. City dwellers versus rural communities. And those with strong opinions, for and against, on pretty much everything from environmentalism to our relationships with other countries.

When friends sent me outrageous claims that they felt were factual, I would respond with links to Snopes.com to prove their falsity — but even I got swept up in the frenzy on occasion, forwarding anti-Trump or spurious right-wing accusations to my online friends without first checking their veracity.

Plus, some of my friends simply countered that Snopes was a left-wing conspiracy site.

Sigh. Where was the truth, really? Who could say?

Our country became an “us vs. them” society, one that had certainly existed since before the Civil War, but remained mostly in the shadows in recent years until Trump shined a spotlight on us.

How to Heal a Nation

Under President Joe Biden, some of the online nastiness has died down, although we all know the bitter divisiveness still exists. From “Let’s Go, Brandon!” flags and bumper stickers to anti-Trump memes that continue to get circulated on the left, the two sides still spit and spar like feral cats in an alley.

Just not as loudly these days.

There’s no simple antidote to this complex and centuries-old cultural divide, but there are steps all of us can take to reduce its bitter symptoms.

We can stop climbing on our side’s bandwagon by refusing to forward or mimic anything solely designed to antagonize those who don’t agree with us.

We can read beyond the headlines, listen beyond the sound bites. Even — as difficult as this can be sometimes — agree to disagree on some issues.

We can concentrate instead on finding and supporting those things we all agree on — the need for solid infrastructure, improvements in care for our aged, ensuring affordable healthcare and education for all, and better oversight of how our tax dollars are spent.

In fact, we can start by simply identifying what these shared issues are, and what each of us can do to address them.

We can stop shouting at each other. And dispense with the divisive labels. And maybe lower our flags and remove the bumper stickers.

Because let’s face it, what we all really want is what’s best for our country, our children, our parents. We may never agree on exactly how to accomplish that, but I think most of us can agree that we still love living here, and can list dozens of reasons right off the bat as to why we do.

Unlike many of our political “leaders,” let’s reach across the aisle and begin to mend the divide.

For me, that means trying harder to resist knee-jerk reactions to opinions I don’t agree with. And listening better.

What would a more united United States mean to you?

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