Originally published at crisis magazine
Is divine intervention the only way to effectively communicate with our fellow Americans?
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” That famous line from the movie Cool Hand Luke, uttered by the Captain (played by Strother Martin), could be the theme of America’s current red-blue divide. It is also an accurate diagnosis of problems in the Catholic Church.
America today is bifurcated by language. “Blue” America, by which I mean the liberal/progressive enclaves, usually urban, does not understand “red” America, which encompasses most of the rest of the country. Due to progressive capture of the media and culture, red Americans are steeped in blue language and ideas. On the other side of the divide, blue Americans often have little or no familiarity with red Americans and their “folkways,” to borrow an anthropological term.
On a recent episode of the well-known radio interview show Fresh Air, a staple on NPR stations, interviewer Tonya Mosley began her questions to guest Hilton Als, a culture critic and longtime New Yorker writer, this way: “I couldn’t help but think about the limitations of language at this particular time when we can’t even seem to agree on a shared reality….” To which Als responded: “Or don’t want to…I think you’re being kind. Tonya,
