I began writing this article on America’s fragmentation a couple days ago, before the Las Vegas shooting happened. I had no idea how clearly my point was about to be illustrated.

Here’s what I had in mind as I began writing:

If North Korea were to land a nuclear missile in California, could it break open a major fault line? The answer is most certainly yes — though not necessarily one in the ground. I know nothing about the seismic risk, but I’m sure a bomb landing on the west coast could shake our whole society to pieces.

I pray that such an attack never happens. But if it does, I can see it being awful beyond its direct destructive effect, for we are less equipped to face that kind of national crisis today with a united front than at any time since the Civil War. Our country is fragmented enough as it is. A real attack on our own cities could split it wide open.

I can see critics shouting, “It’s Trump’s fault! He egged them on!” This won’t be ordinary political criticism. It will come from people who are angrier at Trump than at Kim Jong Un for actually firing the missile.

That was it: the opening of the first draft. Just some educated speculation,  needing more thought to flesh it out. But I took my usual weekend off on Sunday and Monday (I work Saturdays) and did no more on it for a while. But during that time I ran across a quote that fit unfortunately all too well, so this is how I was planning to proceed:

No such attack has come, thankfully, and we can pray we won’t see my expectations proved right or wrong on that count. But my concerns aren’t merely for some unknown possible future. We really are divided. As David Bradshaw wrote in the current issue of Touchstone,

The strife is not merely political, but extends to matters of religion, morals, and even manners and entertainment. We in America simply do not like one another very much anymore.

This is hurting us now, and will hurt us more as we face internal challenges, not to mention external attacks. We’ve become so involved in fighting one another, we’re completely unprepared to fight a real enemy, if ever we encountered one. I don’t know how we’ll even know who that enemy is.

Then Las Vegas happened. And not only that, but this as well:

A @CBS legal exec thought the Las Vegas victims had it coming. pic.twitter.com/YjeSyAox59

— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) October 2, 2017

She was a vice president and CBS’s general counsel. And she proved Bradshaw right. She really, really didn’t like a lot of people, almost half the country. “Not even sympathetic” since the victims were probably “Republican gun toters.”

Usually people pull together following disaster. This is a disturbingly prominent person altering that pattern.

CBS fired her immediately, saying,

This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS. Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS.

They did well to fire her. But a year ago they hired her. It’s impossible to believe no one in the executive suite knew her prejudices. It’s hard to believe they didn’t share them to a great extent, probably even encouraging her in them.

Above all, it’s hard to believe an attorney with skill to land the job she had wouldn’t have known the trouble that tweet would cause — not unless she lived in a world where such sentiments were freely bantered around, albeit more discreetly.

I need not remind you how influential CBS is.

The shooting in Las Vegas was horrific. Yet there’s a madman across the Pacific who wants to kill even more Americans by a factor of thousands, if not millions. If he tries, will we claw at each other’s throats this way? Or will we come together to fight the real enemy?

I wish I could be more confident we’d pull together. If we don’t start coming together  now, though, I’m not sure we’ll be able to do it when it really counts.