This post invites you to share your perspective on a question I am wondering about.
Obviously, a major theme this week was Biden offering to bind the nation back together, to begin healing the worst polarization since 1865.
Joe had that line about being a President for all Americans. Of course, many candidates have said that. But it has special meaning in the Age of Trump. I think most of us are moved and motivated by the notion of a President healing the great ideological divide, so intense that it has split many of our families. Of course, we want some justice and punishment—we ain’t ready to just forgive and forget. But the notion of America re-discovering its essential strength—the ability to compromise in productive ways—is, I think, fundamental to the possibilities available to Joe and Kamala. We cannot save American democracy without recovering a shared consensus to allow us to mediate partisan conflicts.
But of course reconciliation requires cooperation from both sides. And I am just wondering whether our opponents are at all moved, perhaps sub-consciously, below the level of their ideology and activism, by the attraction of national healing. Obama offered healing and the Right laughed at him. Joe is trying it again.
After 4 exhausting years of Trumpism, will Joe find a better atmosphere for his offer of healing? At least among the Republicans troubled by where we have found ourselves?
Or will the rancorous commitment to total political war grind on?
Are we open to the notion of healing? Or do we need to see some heads roll (metaphorically) first?
I dunno. What do you think?