This article is mostly good. I believe the 24/7 media drives much of the rancor in society as a result of the need for ratings combined with institutional bias. Move away from the news and people are normal.
Justin Fox:
Drive from coast to coast and everybody seems to be getting along fine — as long as you don’t listen to talk radio in the car or turn on cable TV news at the hotel.
“…Now that I’m back in New York and my media diet is back to more or less normal, the sense of calm, remove and, yes, optimism that pervaded my long days of driving has begun to dissipate. Maybe this just means I’m returning to the real world after an escapist journey. But I also wonder if it’s an indication that my normal media diet — even though it’s mostly free of such known toxins as Facebook and cable TV news, and heavy on old books — is driving me a little nuts.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a column puzzling over the rise in political polarization in the U.S. despite the absence of “a single great ideological divide” like slavery in the 19th century, and asked readers what they thought was driving it. The majority of the responses fingered the media in some form or another. That seems about right…”