In many ways, American society seems more contentious and more divided than it has been in a long time. In politics, the long-simmering conflict between Democrats and Republicans that started under President Reagan is coming to an explosive head. For decades, Republicans have moved further and further to the right, and as a reaction, some Democrats, particularly those under Bernie Sanders, have been moving more and more to the left. On another level, since Trump came into office, racist white nationalists and militia men have become more salient and more powerful, while recently, particularly as a result of George Floyd’s death, Black Lives Matter has surged in strength and influence. Actually, George Floyd’s death has brought to the fore the most immediate oppositional group for Black Lives Matter: predatory police. Other head-butting groups include those who want to wear masks for Covid 19, and those who refuse to do so; those who believe in vaccination and the anti-vaxxers, those who believe in income redistribution through a universal base salary paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy and those who want to lower taxes. And then there is a traditional polarization that has been around forever: pro-choice vs. pro-life. There are no points of convergence in all these pairs of opposing philosophies.
Furthermore,
it is not as if all these movements and groups have well-thought-out strategies
with regard to how to implement their ideas and how to demonstrate endgames
that would include their vision. But
then again, on one level, it doesn’t really matter. It may not be a full completion of the goals
that is really desired. In modern
technological society where people live frictionless mediated lives, real
success in one’s ideological goals would take away the intense revitalizing
friction that comes from an intense struggle.
And what could provide a greater struggle than butting heads with one’s
ideological opposite.
What
would define success for white nationalists: continued white dominance, or maybe
even expulsion of racial minorities and Jews?
What would define success for Black Lives Matter? For sure, defunding police departments and
perhaps abolishing them. But after that,
then what? Tearing down statues of
everyone with a perceived slave or colonial connection? That’s already happening. What about greater investment in black
communities? What about reparations?
When
it comes to reparations, the only way to do such a blanket give-away would be
to raise taxes on the wealthy, which, of course, goes entirely against the
philosophy of people who see taxes as a wrongful intervention into people’s
lives.
What
is both of interest and concern is not so much that these and other positions
may be oppositional, but that there seems to be no will on anyone’s part to try
to redefine problems so that there can be some convergence. And anyway, in many cases, the objectives of
these different groups are vague. In
part, this is because the different groups are broken up into sub-groups who
don’t agree among themselves.
In
the American Congress, with the exception of a bill for significant tax cuts,
the Republicans have spent the last few years by being opposed to what the
Democrats propose. But this state of
ongoing opposition particularly acts as a spur to pulling the Republicans out
of their numbness and keeping them alive.
At the same time, it makes it practically impossible for the two parties
to come together, compromise, and pass meaningful legislation. Yes, the two parties have come together to
pass emergency financial relief bills connected to Covid 19, but that’s about
it. In the meantime, the ongoing
conflict between the two parties has paralyzed the Congress and prevented it
from developing legislative strategies for dealing with long-time situations.
And
the non-governmental movements are generating conflicts in different
spaces. White nationalists versus Black Lives
Matter versus the police. Our country is
becoming increasingly polarized in so many ways. More and more people are taking
uncompromising postures with little room to come together with the opposition.
And
yet undergirding the external philosophical difference that are creating these
polarizations, there is the numbness generated by the frictionless mediated
technological society. And these
uncompromising philosophical differences are a very good way to come out of the
experiential vacuum and stay alive, particularly if there’s no hope of
resolving the philosophical differences with compromise. Coming to an agreement and compromising would
mean having to return to the experiential vacuum and becoming numb. Particularly most modern white Americans, who
have been unthinkingly, numbingly indifferent to the problems experienced by
black Americans, are suddenly “shocked” by what they see and are experiencing
themselves feeling wonderfully alive in feeling “shocked”. Suddenly, they have a mission, a mission that
may be very noble indeed, but because it is so vague and expansive and because
it stimulates an opposition that will help them to feel very much alive, has
the potential for lasting a long, long time without resolving itself with a
meaningful endgame.
And
all these movements have strong internal divisions which will also help to
stimulate people to life. I want to
emphasize that I am not trying to reduce all the motivation behind moral
positions today to pulling out of numbness and feeling alive. On one hand, people can participate in the
moral positions that they espouse and be totally sincere about their
beliefs. On the other hand, the
uncompromising polarization created by the way these beliefs are expressed show
that certain strong psychological needs are also being expressed, will continue
to be expressed for the foreseeable future, and will continue to shape the way
these beliefs are actualized in the external world. With no regard for whether or not they tear
the United States apart.
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