Who Belongs In America?

I first saw Sebastian Junger, author of the new book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, in an interview on the Show +All In with Chris Hayes. I will post exactly what he said in that interview as soon as the transcript is available. But here's what I was able to quickly dictate while watching the show:

The contempt that we’ve seen in the recent political season ... many political leaders speaking with incredible contempt and lack of respect and derision for their fellow citizens, for the president, for the congress, for parts of the demographic. That kind of tone is reserved for when you’re talking about the enemy. You don’t do it when you’re talking about people in your own camp. People that you have to rely on. And I think that what happens with a lot of soldiers is that they fight for their country, and they come back, and they realize that they’ve just fought for a country that’s fighting with itself. Imagine how destructive that is?

We are at war with ourselves, but this perspective only really makes sense if you assume everyone who claims a stake in this country truly belongs here. Our fighting is based on strongly held feelings about who deserves what, who should be in charge, and whose participation is legitimate. 

I was beginning to wonder whether anyone else realized that our lack of cohesion as a country is one of the reasons we are not solving more problems. Junger says about as much in another interview he did on +Morning Joe. 





In the +TEDx talk below, Junger presents an antithetical dynamic to what we see in American politics today. He calls it brotherhood:

Brotherhood is different from friendship. Friendship happens in society, obviously. The more you like someone, the more you'd be willing to do for them. Brotherhood has nothing to do with how you feel about the other person. It's a mutual agreement, in a group. That you will put the welfare of the group, that you will put the safety of everyone else in the group above your own. In effect you're saying, I love these other people more than I love myself. 

That's an interesting ideal. I wonder, though, based on our history, whether it's an American ideal? Or whether it's an ideal that can only be implemented within the same race?