Can only speak for myself, but ...

Truth? It's a giant fucking country.

You get a big enough country, and you get a lot of people. More people means a better average number of connections between people.

We've losta lot of that over the last thirty or so years, but you'd be amazed at how much bullshit you can keep going through if you at least think you're not alone.

As individuals, yeah, there's a lot of people that don't have a support network of any kind, but as a whole, that is one thing we do well. And that does give you confidence. It also means that you lose confidence fast when your individual network breaks down or falls apart.

But, I'd argue that it only looks like we're especially good at it because the country is huge, in the news a lot, and we have to leverage it. I see plenty of other places in the world where extended personal connections are just as strong, but that can't reach as far because there's not as much room to expand. So networks are more localised in a country like, France maybe.

We're losing our sense of local community, but we've been gaining a sense of identity linked community. As an example, there's maybe three trans people in my actual town. But there's thousands in my state that I know of. Across the country, it's hundreds of thousands. That community, when it connects, gives the more isolated people here a confidence that they can get through the bad stuff because they have a community that transcends immediacy.

Me? I'm disabled and my town is not exactly super well designed for that. But I have connections to other disabled people, locally and afar. We function as a community that's just as important as the township itself.

Same in regard to me being left wing; in my town, I'm a minority of maybe a dozen. But I know them, and we know others in the rest of the county, and some of us are connected across the state, and online. It's a nation big enough that even if whatever label you have is a fraction of a percentage of the population, there's still hundreds or thousands of people just like you.

That's a powerful source of confidence and resilience once an individual realizes it.

Which, that's why it's important to find ways to let others know they aren't alone. Doesn't have to be big and flashy, but there's power in seeing a total stranger wearing a little pin that indicates support. Doesn't even need to be a conversation, just those little things that help build a sense of connection.