You are forced to respond in kind if the other side escalates the narrative attacks, like using mustard gas in World War I, until eventually the entire game breaks because the anger you’ve created can’t be contained by the rules of the game. And that’s when you are well and truly in the Great Ravine.
This is from a note from Ben last summer that he continues to anchor to as a way a observing what’s happening right in America. I continue to think that we’re at the “eventually the entire game breaks because the anger you’ve created can’t be contained by the rules of the game” part and are now in The Great Ravine.
If I haven’t articulated it before, I don’t consider myself to be an extremist in the “the sky is falling on my head” kind of way, but I am fairly convinced that we’re in some sort of falling apart.
At the very least, things are weird enough that one or two wrong moves exchange between the administration and the public gets us into serious trouble. I’m no expert on a stable democracy falling into some sort of -ism, and my sense is that it happens over years if not decades, but more momentum has gathered around the anger we all have for one another mixed with the threats of domestic military use, that it all feels off.
I hope Ben is wrong in his assessment of how close we are to The Great Ravine.