Episode 18: The State of Our Union
Fun fact: every few years, Jill and I do a “State of our Union” address at home. Jill was the original inspiration for it; when we first started dating and talking about a long-term future together, we set a date to each make a presentation to the other of our hopes, goals, and concerns going in. I did mine as a powerpoint presentation analyzing it like a proposed merger, and she did hers as a piece of proposed legislation, complete with “whereas’s”, sections, subsections, and subsections of the subsections, complete with extensive cross-referencing. Out of that came the inspiration for a periodic “the state of our union”.
Sadly, the state of our political union is not so fun to explore. I highly recommend this article exploring political polarization in the U.S. in recent times. The article opens with this observation:
“Until a few decades ago, most Democrats did not hate Republicans, and most Republicans did not hate Democrats. Very few Americans thought the policies of the other side were a threat to the country or worried about their child marrying a spouse who belonged to a different political party.
All of that has changed. A 2016 survey found that 60 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans would now balk at their child’s marrying a supporter of a different political party. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the Pew Research Center reported that roughly nine out of 10 supporters of Joe Biden and of Donald Trump alike were convinced that a victory by their opponent would cause “lasting harm” to the United States.”
A theme of my posts here has been that people’s dissatisfaction with government broadly is real and deserved, but that it’s targeted in the wrong places. If everyday liberals think that everyday conservatives are some kind of mortal threat to the nation, they’re wrong about that. Conversely, if everyday conservatives think that everyday liberals are some kind of mortal threat to the nation, they’re wrong too. That conversation is one I’ve had many times over the last couple years.
I’m a founding member of our local chapter of the California Republican Assembly, and we hold our meetings at a local cafe once a month on Saturday mornings. In our last meeting, we were listening to a guest speaker who was presenting a plan to break California up into smaller pieces. Personally, that strategy doesn’t appeal to me, but I think it’s important to understand the frustrations that drive people to solutions like that, and anyway he was affable and a good presenter.
Since it’s an active cafe, random people wander in and out, and in the middle of the presentation a fellow walked in pushing a stroller with a toddler in it. He heard a few minutes of the presentation as he waited for his coffee, and what he heard definitely “triggered” him, as they say. As he walked out, he shouted some pretty spirited stuff at the presenter, who, it must be said, handled it quite well.
In a couple months I’ll be the one presenting there, and when I do, I’ll bring up the incident to make a point: here’s a guy who almost certainly disagrees with us on most of the things. But is he an enemy? To me, he’s a guy getting the coffee it takes to survive modern parenting of a toddler. He’s just trying to get through another day, same as the rest of us, with his particular understanding of the world and the issues in it. Which means, though he may disagree with us, and quite strongly, he isn’t the enemy. It’s vitally important to understand the real enemy, if we’re ever going to build a stronger country.
The real enemy has always been there- sometimes weaker, and sometimes stronger. It’s concentrated power, wherever that exists: in our economy, or in our political system. The problem with “concentrated power” as an enemy is that it’s very abstract, and therefore hard to concretize for people. Most politicians don’t try- they just rely on cliches that are easy to understand: the enemy is “conservatives” or “liberals” or “the media” or whatever. You’ll probably get some of that tonight in President Biden’s speech and in the rebuttal.
The article I referenced at the beginning closes with this:
“We urgently need visionary leaders and institutional reforms that can lower the stakes of political competition. Imagining what a depolarization of American politics would look like is not too difficult. The only problem is that America’s political partisans may already hate one another too much to take the steps necessary to avoid catastrophe.”
I’ve got a post cooking about some ideas for “ institutional reforms that can lower the stakes of political competition”, and I hope one day I’ll get to push for them in the halls where such things are decided. But in the meantime, irrespective of what you hear tonight, concentrated power is your real enemy. Everything else is just noise. Remember that.