The virtual world brought with it millions of parallel experiences. It didn’t just expand our access to information - it partitioned our lives.
One person is lost in Dungeons & Dragons, another in Friends reruns, another defines their reality through three friends - each of whom sees the group differently. Another orbits a band, a Twitch stream, a Reddit thread, a symphony.
Once upon a time, America was divided into 13 colonies, later 50 states. Now, in the age of virtual immersion, the United States is divided into 335 million personal realities - each fed by its own feed, its own curated symbols, memories, and narratives.
In this world, the idea that one political ideology - left, right, libertarian, socialist, populist - can command, convince, or unify more than a sliver of these realities seems less like ambition and more like delusion.
At best, a political ideology today can annoy a majority.
Commanding consensus? That’s not just unlikely - it’s based on an outdated map of a country that no longer exists in one place at one time. Jefferson's world had borders. This world does not.
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