You are frighteningly insight and wise here. I am moved by your points on the skill of listening. The issue of divide and conquer in America, and other European nations where the rise of the right is continual, comes from an opposing perspective the eliminates listening at all to a type of left wing apathy that does not take the right’s xenophobic hatred seriously. The target of the hatred in America continually shifts a bit, though always aimed at black Americans in sectarian South and partly growing in the North after the civil war, but the animus remains intact. They listen, but only to their leaders, many of them throughout our history have had fatal expressions of hatred of the other which historians can ignore because of things like positive economic growth and spectacular building and infrastructure growth along with dazzling technology. Blinded by those achievements, we easily can forget that physical progress does equal moral progress, and that lack of understanding means moral decline can and does occur.

Thanks for your great reflections here. Keep dancing.