Common Conviction

Now that the 2024 election is in the books, the “two sides” of our polarized politics are analyzing, in triumph or in trauma, the causes of their loss or win.  

One point that has not gained particular attention is how politics today is focused on opposing the other side, a contest of “antis.”  True, the left advocates for diversity and abortion rights, and the right espouses religious observance and business growth.  But the ads, the rhetoric, and the policy proposals were much more about the other sides’ agendas.  From the left, undoing the Roe repeal, preventing broad tariffs, and keeping fascist sentiments out of office; from the right, ending the Biden border laxity and stopping transgender wokeness.  

In indignant opposition to the opponents’ evils, politicians put words in the other sides’ mouths, and rile up their supporters.  This tactic pushes the other side to counter in kind, as trying to correct a strident accusation usually looks weak.  The technique is probably less a fully deliberate invention than a “natural” motivational impulse.  But this version of nature is self-reinforcing, and deepens America’s divisions.  

The rhetoric of “anti” continues on both sides, one exhorting its adepts to keep “fighting” for the rights of women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants and others, the other planning how to get rid of illegal immigrants and dismantle DEI measures, to “take America back.”  If the pattern continues and the divisions deepen, then the dark tones of violence look more plausible.  Cults like “Proud Boys” and “Antifa” both feel the logic of this rhetoric and gain a sense of mutually justified license, even if no one actually endorses either of them out loud.  

It is highly debatable that significant civil violence will arise in the next few years.  But the prospect is more conceivable than even a few years ago.  The dynamics of polarization have seen to that.  The danger is not just that violence occurs, but that a mutually-poisoning, self-escalating cycle of rhetoric and actions turns division into alienation of American from American.

All war is catastrophic, and civil war is particularly horrific.  Alienation in America that could run to this level carries another type of tragedy.  The nation conceived itself in a common, self-declared holding of Truths: of personal rights equally endowed in all, and that government exists to secure those rights.  Living by such an abstract, aspirational nationhood is difficult.  It exists for free people to exercise their personal rights, but it also needs us to exercise governing power in a way that ensures rights of others.  In the ancient image of a selfish human nature, that is self-contradictory.  The politics of polarization indulge and exploit this conception of human nature, which further corroborates it.  If that politics holds, then our founding premise is incorrect.  If we live by those tactics, if partisan interests trump our founding Truths, then we disprove this American experiment.

American politics will continue in mutually opposing policies and protest for a while.  Will this conduct peter out naturally?  Possibly, but how that happens is hard to see.  Can a restoration of basic comity occur?  That question points toward a key question: is there something that we actually all agree on, which could induce partisans to treat their adversaries as fellow Americans first, and not “them?”

We need to embrace an overriding commonality, in a core underlying ethos that puts partisan politics in its place.  It does not require “unity;” even the most exalted aspirations will admit of different means and diverse pathways to pursue them.  But America’s founding creed, that abstract aspirational set of Truths in which the nation conceived itself in 1776, fits that bill.  It is that premise we cannot afford to lose; embracing it is also our best tool to defuse polarization.   

How can anyone actually move us to this common embrace?  Actually, no “one” can.  As a nation of free persons, our comity must come from three hundred million Americans feeling our shared premises, each by “my” own free will.  Individuals cannot follow-the-leader, we cannot submerge ourselves in cheering crowds or chanting marches, for this creed to take true effect.  We can help each other, though.  We need, first, to listen more and declaim less – and we all need to realize that the unalienable rights work for the “other side” too, no matter who they are. Then, if we build this expectation, perhaps if someone voices the creed in a way that helps someone else see its value; if pundits and scholars cast public discourse to put creedal conviction over partisan grievance; if doers and shakers in their enterprises follow its spirit instead of “satisficing” rules; then our common conviction will be easier for all to embrace.  

Above all, if we look, in coming years, less to stop the other’s agendas and more to build everyone’s prosperity and nurture each others’ well being, we will enable each other to exercise our rights, and may learn better to respect each others’ voices.  If we devote our energies to our common ends, resentment over “the other” blocs’ means will abate.  Compromises and others’ needs will be easier to accept, and we will feel our common conviction.

When the partisans run out of fuel, when populists in government undo the conspiracies or run out of them, when demands for the aggrieved are obviated by principled conduct or satiated, the partisans will face a choice.  Do they dig ever deeper for resentful energies, or do they realize that their legitimacy rests, both sides, on our common creed?  Will we be big enough to steer our politicians to serve the nation founded on rights, over their vested partisan interests?