“We no longer have a common thread.”

Editor’s note: With the country more divided than ever in the last half century, I thought important to share what I found important viewpoints that access our times:

+ Leonard Pitts Jr.: Americans have lost the willingness, ability to share a common national identity

“The view from this pew is that what has gone missing from this country is not some idealized unity. Rather, it is something more profound. We no longer share a narrative. We no longer have a common thread.”

“What Americans have lost — to be painfully accurate, what Republicans have trashed in pursuit of power — is the willingness and ability to share a common national identity. The average Republican trusts almost no mainstream source of information. As a result, Americans no longer proceed from the same baseline assumptions, are no longer driven by the same national aspirations, no longer understand the meaning and mission of their country in the same way.

“That’s the state of this union. America is a nation in stasis, getting nowhere because it is simultaneously being pulled in opposite directions toward fundamentally different visions. The need to fix this — better education in civics, history, critical thinking and media literacy along with improved policing of social media — could hardly be more urgent. After all, if you pull a thing in different directions at the same time, it can’t move.

“But it can break.” Click here to read the full story.

+ The national, collective identity of Ukraine is Putin’s greatest threat [Ed. note: From this video, America has much to learn.]

+ Maggie Haberman, The New York Times: Trump Allies Continue Legal Drive to Erase His Loss, Stoking Election Doubts [Ed. note: The demise of democracy is in sight as early as this November if every election is now going to be determined to be “rigged” before anyone has voted.]

+ MSNBC’s Morning Joe: ‘Something went haywire’: Why past decade has been ‘uniquely stupid’ – In a recent Atlantic piece, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes about the past decade of American life and why he calls it uniquely stupid. Haidt joins Morning Joe to discuss. [Ed. note: The cause of the dumbing down of America was noted as being from the Far Right, Far Left, trolls, and Russian agents.]

Click here to read Jonathan Haidt’s article in The Atlantic.

+ Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO): New Rule: The War on Democracy