Someone told me recently that a commentator or some sort had said, The United States is in spiritual free-fall. When people make such remarks, such appalling judgements, they never include themselves, their friends, those with whom they agree. They have drawn, as they say, a bright line between an us and a them. Those on the other side of the line are assumed to be unworthy of respect or hearing, and are in fact to be regarded as a huge problem to the us who presume to judge them. This tedious pattern has repeated itself endlessly through human history and is, as I have said, the end of community and the beginning of tribalism.
~ Marilynne Robinson
