Anne's Share: What It Means to Be American

I loved this Anne, thank you for sharing. Such a rich and interesting conversation around themes I often think about too: choosing a country, what gets left behind when we do, the loss of collective aspiration, the growing distrust of elites, and what happens when national identity becomes more defensive than aspirational.
I also really appreciated Fareed Zakaria’s effort to genuinely understand why people support Trump, rather than dismissing them outright. It felt like one of the underlying threads of the whole conversation was this idea that if we stop trying to understand why people feel disillusioned, we make the divide even worse.
And there was another idea I found interesting: the suggestion that America has shifted from being an optimistic, future-oriented project to something more fearful and tribal. I’m not American, but that tension between openness and protectionism feels visible in so many countries at the moment; Including France and Australia are the two I know best… Mayen this is a good opportunity to revisit Tim’s Conversation Starter (& related comments) for those of you who missed it :) https://www.thinkandthinkagain.org/posts/a-conversation-starter-by-tim

Thanks, Jeanne! Yes, I appreciated how both Fareed and David treated the topic seriously, and didn't write off the objections that have been raised by this populist movement. What it also brought up for me was the cruel irony: in many ways, we have never been so easily connected, but increasingly lonely and tribal. How can we remedy this and how does technology become a force for good in terms of facilitating these connections, as opposed to amplifying distance and hate? Obviously Think and think again is a great way to bridge this divide :) But I can't help but think that the backlash to globalism is almost because we can be so connected and yet so many of us feel left behind. It is natural to become skeptical of the systems that have brought about this reality.