What is the Way Forward for a Nation Divided?

The year of 2020 has felt like a decade with all that has happened. A global pandemic along with social unrest has left almost no aspect of life unaffected. To top off this year, we’re ending with one of the uglier elections in recent history, one that was always going to end with a sizeable share of the American population being enraged no matter who won. In the wake of a declared winner, we will see even more of the squabbling and bitterness that preceded election day. “Racist” and “Nazi” will be spat with even more vitriol than before, and accusations of “Socialist” and “Cheaters” will be bellowed in return. Both the Left and the Right will return to their respective echo chambers confirmed in their beliefs that the other side contains the worst sort of people. Individuals and organizations will try to facilitate honest and civil discourse as a means of unifying communities composed of a plurality of beliefs, narratives, and values. However, there doesn’t appear to be much interest in reaching across the political divide currently. As a nation, we are bitter and frustrated with this election regardless of what side we are on. I think we can all agree that this election and indeed politics in general have gotten ugly this year, and the idea of building or maintaining relationships with people of a different political orientation is downright disgusting and abhorrent to many of us right now.

I believe a reason for this staunch divide is that virtually all of us in America are fundamentally mistaken about what a democratic and pluralistic society is capable of doing. Our two-party system tends to set up an adversarial, one-on-one game. This structure lends itself to the belief that to win the election allows your set of values and your narrative to win. Subsequently, because the correct values triumph, then the correct policy will be passed, and the correct solutions will be implemented. Sure, there will be those that oppose them, but the fact that they do indicates how misguided, ignorant, and perhaps even evil they are, right? I am not so sure.

In a pluralistic society, meaning one composed of a multitude of values, beliefs, religions, ethnicities, and world narratives, can we arrive at a singular correct answer when it comes to governance and policy? I think that our instinct is to believe that we can, and of course the right answer is the one that I believe. I can formulate moral and pragmatic arguments that are rational and support the solution I believe in. However, it’s not obvious that there is one perfectly right answer when it comes to governing a wide variety of people. The assertion that there is would be overlooking a lot of particularity in circumstances. My political and social beliefs, the values I hold, and the way I define those values tend in large part to be a product of my unique experiences. Within a diverse liberal democracy there are innumerable differences in beliefs about how the state ought to govern and what values should be prioritized in governance.

One of the biggest barriers to good discourse is the idea that anyone who disagrees with you is irrational or the idea that if someone is wrong about one thing then they are wrong about everything. These excuses allow us to shut down conversation because we can’t converse with an irrational person, so we don’t have to engage with anyone that espouses a view that we deem irrational. In doing this though, we miss that often there are rational arguments on both sides. The difference in the political divide is not one of rationality versus irrationality. The differences are differences of values and notions of values. This is a critical distinction to make because it moves political disagreements away from the “my side is rational, and the other side is idiotic. Now watch me destroy the other side with facts and logic” format that gets clicks and views on social media. Instead, it shifts political and social discourse toward a format that pushes individuals to engage in real conversations about what they value and why they do.

Your opponents aren’t inherently evil, racist, fraudulent, stupid or out to destroy the country because they don’t agree with you. Undoubtedly, some of them are one or all of those adjectives, but to make the claim that anyone on the other side is a racist or a socialist or whatever the trending insult is at the time is reductive, lazy, and counterproductive. One of the great tragedies of this election year is how many people have felt comfortable posting or saying out loud “If you support *insert candidate*, then we are not friends because that means you are a *insert derogatory label*.” Families have had their relationships significantly broken because of a difference in political belief. Friends have parted ways over political disagreements. Neighbors are alienated upon revelations of political affiliation or perspectives on social issues. We have an egregious habit in current American politics of looking at the most extreme part of the other side and projecting the beliefs and actions of that extreme faction on to the entirety of the other side. Every individual on the left must support Antifa, right? Every person on the right must be a white supremacist, right? We reduce people we don’t agree with to the most extreme outliers of their side because it makes them easier to dismiss, ridicule, and hate. Think about how reductive that is even within a two-party system. Both the Left and the Right have far more variance in belief and values within their respective groups than we recognize. The idea that we would define our neighbor, family member, or friend by the most radical subset of their political coalition is foolish. It follows the same line of logic as: 1. There are Islamic terrorists 2. Therefore, all Muslims are terrorists.

We are failing to recognize that one side winning the day is a wrong-headed way to think of things in democracy. This perspective facilitates an adversarial society rather than a collaborative one. In a pluralist society, we always live in tension between different values, different prioritization of values, and different conceptions of those values. For example, I know very few people that would say they would prefer to live in a society that is either all justice with no mercy or all mercy with no justice. Most of us would agree that we want a society that punishes wrongdoing, but also allows people to make mistakes and not be thrown to the wolves. The reality is that once we determine that we need a balance between values then the messy process of balancing happens within the political and social activity of society. And we do not reach perfect solutions adequately addressing every particularity of every individual situation or community. It’s not apparent in many cases that the same answer for a problem is applicable for a small town in Oregon and a major city in Texas. The solutions derived from the aggregation of millions of different value systems are varying degrees of imperfect.

Furthermore, we must contend with difference in the conceptions of values. What does freedom mean to you? What about security, patriotism, trust, power, peace? Chances are your conception differs from other people’s even those who may be in your political ideology. What we often do is default to our conception being the right one and others’ conceptions being wrong. How would our conversations regarding values in policymaking or social activity look differently if instead we looked at our conceptions of values as partial or weighted in a particular way? For example, take the value of security. People on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum can value security in completely different ways. One person may conceive of security primarily in terms of law and order. They care about the rules being enforced well. They are concerned with making sure police departments are well-equipped to enforce order locally and the federal government devotes adequate resources to national security. Another person may think of security in a more social context. Maybe they are concerned about low-income families or older people being able to feel secure in their access to social services. Maybe they are worried about providing a secure and stable sanctuary to refugees. Is there a good argument that one of these people is objectively right and the other wrong in their conception of security? Both conceptions merely emphasize a part of what security is or can be. Their notions of security lead them to esteem different policy priorities more highly, but one conception is not definitively better than the other. In fact, this affirms that both sides need each other to be present in the conversation about how to instantiate these values in the public sphere on a national and local level. Public policy and social discourse are dialectical, and I would argue that good dialectics require tension and variance in perspective to function well.

Add in the consideration that we are attempting to navigate a balance not just between two values but rather the aggregated values of millions of Americans regarding dozens of social, economic, and religious values. Is it any wonder that things are messy? Also, don’t forget that individual values are heavily influenced by particularities like where you live and individual experiences. For example, a young, college-educated, white-collar worker in Philadelphia might be adamantly against steel tariffs because they know this will lead to market inefficiencies in resource allocation and higher prices paid on goods that use steel as a raw material. Their perspective is rational. They understand the impact of a protective economic policy, they deem it harmful, and so they value free trade over protectionist economic policy. Now what about a steel worker in rural Pennsylvania? They have a high school education, a family, are in their late 50’s, and they have a good job at a steel mill that will be lost if steel is freely traded with China. They are staunch supporters of steel tariffs because these will allow them and hundreds of others in their community to keep a job in a time where they may not be able to find another comparable job. Perhaps, they can’t feasibly gain new job skills allowing them to compete in the current labor market. The steel workers’ perspective is also rational. Are they dumber or a worse person than the white-collar worker?

I’m not promoting some smarmy relativism here. This isn’t a “live your truth”, all opinions and value judgments are equally valid, fairy tale. Some policies are better than others at reaching an expressed goal. Yet, setting goals is value-based and recognizing that provides contenders a chance to find common ground in underlying values or cooperate better in balancing values even where proposed means differ. What I am arguing against is a reductive understanding of those who value different things than you. Someone isn’t stupid or malicious because they don’t agree with you. I am arguing against an adversarial mentality that promotes having to beat the other side in order to secure the future from inevitable destruction. I am arguing for a willingness to converse and work amidst tensions where there are not perfect answers.

The prevailing attitude on both sides of the political aisle right now is “Play my game according to my rules, or I take my ball and go home.” You’re not proving your moral or intellectual superiority because you cancel or block “toxic” people who believe differently than you do. You’re not right or superior because you can destroy a caricatured, straw-man argument without engaging in a real conversation. Productive conversations remain open to the possibility that you can disagree and acknowledge the other person isn’t wrong, stupid, or the worst sort of person. You don’t win arguments by leaving them. Beware retreating into comfortable groups that think exactly like you and hold the exact same values. These are echo chambers where you run the risk of only hearing the echoes of your own words repeated back to you. There is danger here. It’s exactly what Nietzsche warned against when he declared “Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.” Perhaps that tension of values is a feature of liberal democracy as much as it’s a bug. Perhaps I need your conception of a “free and just” society to temper my conception of a “free and just” society in order that we might arrive a solution that while not perfect may better serve a greater number of the populace. We don’t reach this point, however, if at every turn I dismiss your opinions, proposed solutions, and values as the product of socialist, racist, fascist, or idiotic thinking.

What we need right now is to step away from a mentality that necessitates beating the other side and step into a mentality that is willing to work in amidst tension, disagreement, and passion. If we are willing to make this step, we have a chance to live with, work alongside, support, engage, and love those that we radically differ from in opinion without thinking them the worse for it. It is not going to be easy, but it is worth striving toward.