Part 3 of a series on America’s changes:
So here I am, sweating on the scattered mulch of our school playground, trying to make a new friend in our first month of Normal Life In America. It’s late August, 2022. Muggy. Cicadas screaming.
I’m waiting outside my kids’ school to pick them up, and I’m doing get-to-know-you chat with a mom I hope will become a pal. School pickup is really awkward if you don’t have anyone to talk to. You gotta get the friends.
Chat goes something like this:
“Anyway, we moved back about a month ago – ”
“Oh! Where did you move from?”
“Seoul, actually. South Korea.”
“No way! That’s so…far! How long were you there? What was it like?”
“Almost five years. Yeah, it was a great adventure! We missed family though. And of course, with the pandemic, everything shut down, everyone was masked, and life got a lot less fun.”
At this point I notice a slight chill in the conversation. I’ve not exactly offended the lady, but there’s definitely something weird going on.
I try to read her face. Is she…Annoyed? Nervous? Scared?
Looking back, after a little more time in America, I know it was probably all three, and it was probably because I’d said the words “pandemic,” “shut-down,” and “masking.”
In Korea, in my little expat circle, those words just described our daily lives. They weren’t hand grenades. In America, those words are landmines, labels, shibboleths. Triggers.
Here, how you communicate about the pandemic, masking, vaccines, or shut downs becomes a secret code for you feel about EVERYTHING.
Not to state the obvious, but while I was gone, America polarized into factions.
(As an Enneagram 9, I take full responsibility for this.)
While I was gone, my friends and countrymen developed a complex series of litmus tests to figure out if Those People were Our People.
Did you mask during the pandemic or did you see it as an infringement of your rights?
Is race a social construct? Will you only trust me if I look like you?
Do you think Trump incited a coup, or was he right about The Steal?
Do you ignore the lamestream media or do you think Musk destroyed Twitter?
Are you for defunding the police or Backing the Blue?
And on and on. In this context, I might as well have asked my new friend, “How much did your house cost?” “How’s your sex life?” or “Who’d you vote for?”
While I was gone, it wasn’t just the pandemic that happened. Trump happened. Black Lives Matter activated. A zillion church scandals and leadership failures tore the Bride apart. People got weirdly opinionated about Anthony Fauci and middle school reading lists. Some part of the country was always, literally, on fire.
There was never not something to be upset about.
Sometimes I was naïve enough to think, “If people would just talk honestly and vulnerably with each other, they’d understand the other side’s perspective!”
And then I’d remember then that the worst atrocities are perpetrated by neighbors who knew each other’s stories already. The India-Pakistan Partition. Israel and Gaza. Our own civil war.
We’re the quickest to condemn those we know best.
We now know a little more about why America polarized:
Algorithms tend to create silos of groupthink. This intensifies when, as during the pandemic, folks were extremely online.
Foreign hackers intentionally fostered dissension. This continues today, with aid from ever-more efficient AI.
Political players gain money, attention, and power in an atmosphere of outrage. Our frenzy is their fuel.
We’re not our most healthy selves when we’re isolated, grieving, afraid, and uncertain what our future holds.
With so many people working for our disunity; with so little emotional margin to hold each other tenderly – it makes sense that the country splintered.
I no longer think that “if everyone just listened to each other we’d solve all our differences!”
But I do think it helps if we hang out with people whose experience is really different from our own. I think all of us need healing. I do think there’s repair work to be done, within us and between us.
We’re still far from Christ’s desperate garden prayer that we would be “one, as I and the Father are one.”
Back on the playground and three years wiser, I’ve learned to mostly shut up about my Korean pandemic. At least with new friends. It’s just too hard for Americans to set aside the hyper-politicized filter long enough to hear about my a-political experience elsewhere. If somebody asks, I enjoy talking about it. I just don’t go there without an invitation.
Anyway, there’s lots of other stuff to talk about. There’s more to me than the lockdowns and online schooling and constant masking and total isolation and intense need for therapy of my last two years in Korea. There’s more to me than who I’m going to vote for.
There’s more to all of us.
So here I am, sweating on the scattered mulch of our school playground, trying to make a new friend in our first month of Normal Life In America. It’s late August, 2022. Muggy. Cicadas screaming.
I’m waiting outside my kids’ school to pick them up, and I’m doing get-to-know-you chat with a mom I hope will become a pal. School pickup is really awkward if you don’t have anyone to talk to. You gotta get the friends.
Chat goes something like this:
“Anyway, we moved back about a month ago – ”
“Oh! Where did you move from?”
“Seoul, actually. South Korea.”
“No way! That’s so…far! How long were you there? What was it like?”
“Almost five years. Yeah, it was a great adventure! We missed family though. And of course, with the pandemic, everything shut down, everyone was masked, and life got a lot less fun.”
At this point I notice a slight chill in the conversation. I’ve not exactly offended the lady, but there’s definitely something weird going on.
I try to read her face. Is she…Annoyed? Nervous? Scared?
Looking back, after a little more time in America, I know it was probably all three, and it was probably because I’d said the words “pandemic,” “shut-down,” and “masking.”
In Korea, in my little expat circle, those words just described our daily lives. They weren’t hand grenades. In America, those words are landmines, labels, shibboleths. Triggers.
Here, how you communicate about the pandemic, masking, vaccines, or shut downs becomes a secret code for you feel about EVERYTHING.
Not to state the obvious, but while I was gone, America polarized into factions.
(As an Enneagram 9, I take full responsibility for this.)
While I was gone, my friends and countrymen developed a complex series of litmus tests to figure out if Those People were Our People.
Did you mask during the pandemic or did you see it as an infringement of your rights?
Is race a social construct? Will you only trust me if I look like you?
Do you think Trump incited a coup, or was he right about The Steal?
Do you ignore the lamestream media or do you think Musk destroyed Twitter?
Are you for defunding the police or Backing the Blue?
And on and on. In this context, I might as well have asked my new friend, “How much did your house cost?” “How’s your sex life?” or “Who’d you vote for?”
While I was gone, it wasn’t just the pandemic that happened. Trump happened. Black Lives Matter activated. A zillion church scandals and leadership failures tore the Bride apart. People got weirdly opinionated about Anthony Fauci and middle school reading lists. Some part of the country was always, literally, on fire.
There was never not something to be upset about.
Sometimes I was naïve enough to think, “If people would just talk honestly and vulnerably with each other, they’d understand the other side’s perspective!”
And then I’d remember then that the worst atrocities are perpetrated by neighbors who knew each other’s stories already. The India-Pakistan Partition. Israel and Gaza. Our own civil war.
We’re the quickest to condemn those we know best.
We now know a little more about why America polarized:
Algorithms tend to create silos of groupthink. This intensifies when, as during the pandemic, folks were extremely online.
Foreign hackers intentionally fostered dissension. This continues today, with aid from ever-more efficient AI.
Political players gain money, attention, and power in an atmosphere of outrage. Our frenzy is their fuel.
We’re not our most healthy selves when we’re isolated, grieving, afraid, and uncertain what our future holds.
With so many people working for our disunity; with so little emotional margin to hold each other tenderly – it makes sense that the country splintered.
I no longer think that “if everyone just listened to each other we’d solve all our differences!”
But I do think it helps if we hang out with people whose experience is really different from our own. I think all of us need healing. I do think there’s repair work to be done, within us and between us.
We’re still far from Christ’s desperate garden prayer that we would be “one, as I and the Father are one.”
Back on the playground and three years wiser, I’ve learned to mostly shut up about my Korean pandemic. At least with new friends. It’s just too hard for Americans to set aside the hyper-politicized filter long enough to hear about my a-political experience elsewhere. If somebody asks, I enjoy talking about it. I just don’t go there without an invitation.
Anyway, there’s lots of other stuff to talk about. There’s more to me than the lockdowns and online schooling and constant masking and total isolation and intense need for therapy of my last two years in Korea. There’s more to me than who I’m going to vote for.
There’s more to all of us.