Common Conviction

Lots of people say the 2024 election is the most important of our lifetimes – and for the many who are baby boomers that’s saying something.  But no one will win.  What’s really important will not be close to settled by the vote, nor by the disputes over the election process that the losing side will mount.  Everything about the election is already known except the outcome, and quite a bit regarding the next four years is also known, again except for outcomes.  And outcomes, while portentous, are of secondary importance.

True, the “substance” of contentions will be important, from the validity of the election (one potential axis of argument will be “convicted felon” vs “fraudulent mail-in voting”) to abortion policy to Presidential immunities and/or term limits to immigration policy to alliances to Supreme Court nominations, and more.  

But the disputes will only follow the script of our unending, uncompromising, nasty, polarizing political trench wars.  The division already paralyzes government, even inhibiting basic functions – when is the next funding showdown due, and will government re-open after the shutdown?  No substantive policy legislation has been meaningful for a long time, as any measure is either blatantly politicized or does not reach the floor of at least one chamber.  

The consequences, while still only speculations, could be disastrous and could happen suddenly.  We have long neglected serious business and left dangers to fester.  Federal debt levels could finally spark a global flight from U.S. Treasury bills.  How would we fund deficits then?  Could the government sustain Social Security payments or military operations?   Russia could start to win in Ukraine.  Would democratic European allies start to move toward authoritarian nationalism?   A President might pardon himself of a felony.  Would that and the political responses reduce any law to just one more partisan contest?  There is an all too plausible possibility of losing extremely precious things.

Our polarization makes the extreme consequences much more likely.  It only takes is one vote more than half to pass something outrageous.  All takes one ideologue to paralyze a legislature or release a criminal without bail.  And even if a vote, in Congress, in a constituency, in the nation, is held, no one is interested in leaving the other side with its win.  Rebellion and fraud, desperate investigations and impeachments, are normal expectations in our politics today.  

All of this is driven by partisan, left/right, red/blue, MAGA/Woke division.  Even when a reported 80 percent of polled voters claim to be sick of the divisions, the dynamics don’t change.  How can the active 20 percent ruin the nation of all of us?

For starters, no one presents the rest of us with alternatives.  Not in candidates or political parties – you are either one side or the other or somewhere in between, which is to say some percentage of each – or you are a weirdo, and if you’re not a weirdo you get treated as one.  Not in governing thought.  It’s either Bible or Foucault.  Not even in popular culture.  It’s either country or hip hop, soccer or football (Ok, watch basketball.), NPR or Hannity.  

Somehow, if most of us are truly disgusted with the division, we need to find ways to make that the norm, so that “I don’t like either side” doesn’t get reduced to “a tad more red than blue (or vice versa).”  To the extent you disagree with your neighbor on politics, you both need to find a new language to talk about any matter.  For instance, could a dispute between a bakery and a gay couple over a wedding cake be couched as a dispute over boundaries of the parties’ civic rights – one side’s right to follow their church vs the other’s not to suffer discrimination, rather than “homophobic hate vs abominable sin?”  Is it possible to re-cast the abortion issue, from “murder vs sexist oppression” to “enforced support of a dependent vs control of my personal resources?”  The difference is in tone rather than substance, but if opposing sides can agree on new tones, maybe there’s a narrowing of partisan gaps.  

Even if the tone could change, a question of trust remains.  Do I really believe that the “other side” cares about something we share, the way I do?  There is something we do share, in the identity conceived at our founding, of principled commitment to unalienable rights, equally endowed in all, and government created to secure those rights.  If we cannot show ourselves capable of governing ourselves in this conception, we will lose that identity, and this nation.

So the one thing we need to do is to start finding new ways to talk, almost literally to our neighbors, to try to find trust.  From there maybe we can generate a real public discourse.  Iit will take time and perserverance, as all the politicized noise builds up over the coming year or more.  So we’d better start now.  Not by professing how “I’m open to bipartisan solutions” – we all know that performative mask.  Rather, find that rogue cousin or the character in the office and ask – are you one of the 80 percent?  Try one of the formulas above, about abortion or wedding cakes – “do you agree changing the tone is worth the risk of caving in?”  

And take the risk of caving in.  Argue – what could be more American than in loving my country but on my terms? – but risk considering that the other has a point.  Even if you get burned a few times, if the other thinks she’s won the argument.  If no one takes the risk, the paralysis of division will only fester, and Rome is already smoldering.  We, “all of us” as S.S. McClure invoked in another time of disruption, need to replace the war of left vs right with construction of comity against polarization.  If we find a common bottom line and build a platform for discourse on it, maybe then we can craft and debate actual, meaningful, policy.

We need to start rebuilding that discourse, one conversation at a time.  Otherwise, at best, we can only hope for partisans to wear out, maybe in a year or two.  Meanwhile the dangers lurk, we don’t want to be making up contrived unity in panic over some catastrophe that no one can deny is everyone’s fault.  The politicians won’t help.  So talk politics with someone you disagree with.  Trust that they’re part of the 80 percent.  Say hello, to ask and not to declare, to learn about and not to “educate” them.  Today.  There’s no time to waste.