Barack Obama

Women didn't have power and were stereotyped in all kinds of awful ways.

The LGBT community was just invisible and forced in the closet.

There was all kinds of flaws to it, but there was a common narrative that said,

yeah, we can all pledge allegiance to the flag.

We can all feel that we are full-fledged, true-blooded Americans because we believe in these ideals.

And what you're seeing right now is a reassertion of this idea of like, nope, if you don't look a certain way, you don't think a certain way, you don't,

Practice a certain faith.

You know, you're not a real American.

And I started to see this during my – that's what birtherism was about, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That's what – when Sarah Palin was talking about real Americans versus, I guess, the unreal Americans.

It was that that was already boiling over.

And I say all that because I think that –

I think the majority – the vast majority of Americans I still – I think still believe in that creed, that sense of unity, that sense of a shared narrative.

But it's not reinforced a lot in the media and that's where we get back to this whole issue of social media.

You don't hear –

That sense of what we have in common, except during the Super Bowl and a couple other – maybe during the Olympics.

Forbearance, I think, is the formal term that political science use.

You have to put up with folks.

That's right.