These are problematic, because I don't think that we feel we have any unity or national identity, which sounds silly when you say it, but also is the invisible glue that holds the country together.

Nah, doesn't sound silly, I have the same perception. After the USSR dissolved, we lost our collective boogeyman. We can probably thank Bin Laden, the Saudis, Hussein, and even Bush for staving off some of our current flavor of social unrest for just a bit longer. Of course it also did some serious damage, culminating in absolutely unforgivable numbers of dead middle eastern civilians and Trump's Muslim ban attempts. But yeah, I guess apparently we have fingers we just have to point, and, now they're squarely pointed at fellow Americans.

The current amount of wealth inequality, especially in America, is dangerously historic. I'm not quite sure how to restructure the wealth without invoking the government in some way. The libertarian argument of "wealth inequality is good because it allows businesses to take risks which then creates new technologies" isn't technically wrong, but it assumes that new technologies are always beneficial. Obviously some new tech is disruptive, and even intentionally used for nefarious purposes, perhaps most notably to continue furthering wealth inequality while also distracting from what is very clearly class warfare being completely dominated by the wealthy.

The internet

Yes, the most disruptive technology in history. Hitler had the radio, Trump has social media. Those are the most egregious examples, but it'd be ridiculous to assume that the Mercers, Kochs, and Murdochs (except James, he seems OK) of the world aren't also actively manipulating public opinion, literally capitalizing on disinformation campaigns enabled by the quick disruption of widespread, established information ecosystems. There are some people peddling enlightenment and thoughtfulness looks around hubski.com, but it just doesn't pay as well, and it's not where establishment money is.

There is a difference between self-interest and knowingly harming others and society. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make more money for yourself, at least up to a point (I mean, c'mon, there's no way some current CEO salaries reflect the value or difficulty of the job of the CEO). But just because I can make money lying to people by seeding fear and distrust doesn't mean I should. When you can just pull a Steve Bannon and have essentially no harm to your reputation in Trumpworld, we clearly have a problem with insular information ecosystems that needs to be addressed. I don't think the market alone can fix it, but I'm not sure how to protect people from themselves without infringing on free speech. I want to believe there's common ground I have with GOP sentiments to break up Big Tech, but I suspect their motivations only go so far as "We should actually be allowed to lie and hate more on whoever's privatized platform that we want to".

It was really funny last year when Zuckerburg gave like $300 million to fund election integrity tho, I think he was feeling guilty about something. It's more reasonable to assume it was a PR move, but I still enjoyed seeing Trump disparage him for the donation.

bothsides the Gordon Gekkoism

People should pursue wealth and act in their own self-interests, that's fine. There would be more opportunities for more people to pursue wealth if the existing wealthy played by the rules, like paying their share of taxes. The "but they're creating jobs with unpaid taxes" argument is increasingly delusional, and it's also not what we decided as a society.

A public service requirement might not be the worst idea. The military exposes people to demographics that they would have never crossed paths with otherwise, and the results are overwhelmingly positive. It'd be nice if that didn't have to involve or relate to war.