America's existential crisis - an essential read from Salon

Wow.  What an exceptionally important read. 

excerpt:  After a week of shocking and polarizing violence in America, which featured two black citizens shot dead by police in ambiguous circumstances and ended with Thursday night’s sniper killings of five police officers in Dallas (apparently by a lone African-American gunman), we are badly in need of some perspective. Unfortunately, perspective is exactly what we lack in our broken-down republic, although you could just as well say that we’ve got too much of it. Different Americans, and different groups of Americans, perceive different realities, and can barely be said to inhabit the same country.

That fact lies at the heart of our deepening national crisis, which goes beyond political disagreement or racial conflict into existential or epistemological realms.

A must read no matter what your political stripe.