“This is an opportunity for us to connect with each other”: In an age of fragmentation, is the coronavirus ordeal a rare shared American experience? By anthonyted
FILE - In this March 25, 2020, file photo, a person looks at a phone as the sun sets, in Kansas City, Mo. The city along with neighboring counties is under Stay at Home orders to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
But as it unfolds before us, is this period actually that increasingly rare of things — a genuinely shared American experience, a touchpoint that touches all? In an age of fragmentation, what might that mean? 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.
But big events have injected national experience everywhere. During World War II, stories delivered to Americans in newsreels, movies, network radio updates and news agency dispatches in local papers shaped an “American” view that saturated local ones. “To identify a shared experience, there needs to be a community that shares that experience,” she says. “Is it happening to `us’? Is it happening to `my’ social group, `my’ people? If it’s happening to `my’ people, I will talk about it in a certain way.”; in some ways, this nation exists only because it told the story of its existence in its founding documents. In reality, though, there are just about as many storylines as there are Americans.
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