Them – Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal
Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who is often referred to as a moderate Republican, published this book just after the Kavanaugh hearings and used that confrontation between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and across the country to say, “We really don’t like each other, do we?” Sasse explains why American politics has become so tribalistic and vicious and makes recommendations for reconciliation. He is not optimistic that we can be more civil with one another in the short term and attributes growing political antagonism and “partisan tribalism” in part to what he calls “polititainment”-political news that values entertainment over facts.
More importantly though, Sasse is concerned with a general atomization of society. This refers to the tendency for society to be made up of a collection of self-interested and largely self-sufficient individuals, operating as separate atoms. Atomization destroys the social bonds that are essential for a human sense of fulfillment.
Something is wrong. We all know it.
American life expectancy is declining for a third straight year. Birth rates are dropping. Nearly half of us think the other political party isn’t just wrong; they’re evil. We’re the richest country in history, but we’ve never been more pessimistic.
What’s causing the despair?
In Them, bestselling author and U.S. senator Ben Sasse argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, our crisis isn’t really about politics. It’s that we’re so lonely we can’t see straight—and it bubbles out as anger.
Local communities are collapsing. Across the nation, little leagues are disappearing, Rotary clubs are dwindling, and in all likelihood, we don’t know the neighbor two doors down. Work isn’t what we’d hoped: less certainty, few lifelong coworkers, shallow purpose. Stable families and enduring friendships—life’s fundamental pillars—are in statistical freefall.
As traditional tribes of place evaporate, we rally against common enemies so we can feel part of a team. No institutions command widespread public trust, enabling foreign intelligence agencies to use technology to pick the scabs on our toxic divisions. We’re in danger of half of us believing different facts than the other half, and the digital revolution throws gas on the fire.
There’s a path forward—but reversing our decline requires something radical: a rediscovery of real places and human-to-human relationships. Even as technology nudges us to become rootless, Sasse shows how only a recovery of rootedness can heal our lonely souls.
America wants you to be happy, but more urgently, America needs you to love your neighbor and connect with your community. Fixing what’s wrong with the country depends on it.
This is really not a book about politics. Rather, it is about American culture and parallels well with “Bowling Alone” and “Hillbilly Elegy.” It is an interesting analysis of society today through the lens of the author’s small town reality. Sasse states, “Our communities are collapsing and people are feeling more isolated, adrift and purposeless than ever before.” Whether it is the problem of dissolving marriages, depersonalization through social media or frequent job turnover-our sense of community as we once knew it is being destroyed.
Sasse advocates closer personal and community connection for relief from division and solution for moving ahead. The fact that Sasse is not trusted by liberals nor conservatives makes this book more compelling and one can’t help but be drawn in by his social and personal perspectives. I want more from Sasse.
287 Pages Published 10/16/2018 (available at library in print and on CD, Amazon as e-book, print, and audible, Powell’s)
I am amazed at how much I liked this book written by the conservative* Republican Senator from Nebraska. He and I differ on a lot of policies, but I think he totally nails what has gone so totally wrong in our society. He also offers cogent and constructive solutions to our problems. He concedes that the solutions are not easy answers because mostly they involve changing ourselves. He wants to resurrect the concept of “us” in our daily lives.
I think it struck a chord with me because of the similarity of his hometown, Fremont, Nebraska and my adopted hometown of Tillamook, OR.
This excerpt from page 237, I believe, encapsulates his solution for our sickness:
“We are in a period of unprecedented upheaval. Community is collapsing, anxiety is building and we’re distracting ourselves with artificial political hatreds. That can’t endure–and if it does, America won’t.
The alternative is restoring community for our new moment, recognizing that the old modes are obsolete, and that we need to figure out a way to realize a sense of home in a world that looks very different than anything we’ve seen before. New technologies and experimentation will help with that. But, ultimately, it will require habits of heart and mind that introduce neighborliness into a new, more rootless age. It will require us to build new institutions of community that can bond increasingly mobile people together.”
* conservative in the truest sense of the word, not like a lot of the current crop of politicians (eg.Marjorie Green, Loren Boebert, Ted Cruz, Ron DiSantis) who call themselves “conservative” when they’re actually reactionaries who dishonor the fine tradition of conservatism in this country.
As someone who is now retired, but once spent a lot of my life moving around the country, I related to Sasse’s recommendation that we find a way to become “rooted” in the communities where we find ourselves living. He used an analysis made by Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist who said that modern Americans fall into one of three groups–the mobile, the rooted and the stuck. The mobile are profiting from today’s economy while the fastest growing segment, the stuck, are “unable to escape the communities rotting around them.” I have acquaintances and family members in all three of these groups and I can see the benefits for those of us who are able to become rooted, but the difficulties for those who are stuck or who are mobile to experience those benefits.