A new unity is possible in America, but only if we realize how difficult unity is

Mrs. Heretic posted a link to an article on her Facebook timeline yesterday about a speech George W. Bush recently gave. Her posting of this article seemed to approve of what Bush said. Later in the day, she said something to me about being nostalgic for Bush. If I had been able in 2004 to look ahead into the future long enough to hear her say that, I'd have probably refused to live in that timeline, because I'd have assumed someone had hijacked her brain.

In 2004, we moved from Chicago, where we had just finished grad school, to the D.C. area, where I had just landed a new job. I showed up in March, but Mrs. Heretic, who still needed to stay in Chicago until the end of the spring semester to finish up her MA in women's studies, didn't come until the end of April. When she showed up, she came with about ten of her classmates from the women's studies program, who joined her at the March for Women's Lives. They made t-shirts that they all wore, which said, if I recall correctly, something like "Boobs Against Bush."

A sign from the 2004 March for Women's Lives

I wasn't a fan of Bush, either, especially his decision to get America involved in military adventurism in Iraq to achieve nebulous political goals, but to Mrs. Heretic and many other liberals, he was the devil. Or at least, he was a sheep surrounded by devils. The rhetoric from the left about Bush painted him as the dumbest and worst president in history, and often cast him as extremist.

Now that we really do have the dumbest and worst president in American history--one who, if not an extremist himself, certainly plays with the fire of extremism, and only escapes being an extremist because that would involve the commitment to a single idea of which he is incapable--Bush no longer seems like such an enemy to liberals. When we listen to him now, we remember a time when the Republican Party at least pretended to try to represent all Americans, when they really thought they had a chance to win over Latinos, so there was a large faction of them fighting for reasonable immigration reform. We remember the term "compassionate conservatism," and recall a time when presidents at least could somewhat lull us to sleep on their policies we didn't like by drowning out the bad parts with tons of rhetoric everyone agreed with.

I mentioned earlier the idea of going forward in time from 2004 to 2020, but what if we could go back in time from 2020 to 2004? What would our rallies back then look like? Would we still burn Bush in effigy at every rally? Or would we try to build a consensus where we could in order to accomplish some worthy goals, while expressing our firm opposition to the policies we disagreed with, but without demonizing him or his supporters personally?

The problem with civil politics is that the politics of confrontation has seemed to work so well for so long. Politicians have used it as a strategy because their strategy experts told them to. But confrontation isn't really a strategy; it's a tactic, one that should only be used for a limited time for limited purposes with very specific aims. Continuing to use it long-term might win you some battles, but you'll lose the war, not because your enemy vanquished you, but because the whole battlefield will turn to poison that kills you along with your enemy. That's where we are now.

There's a paradox in politics that the larger your coalition, the stronger you are relative to those outside your coalition, but the more internal stresses you face. The more groups you bring in, the more you can defend yourselves from outside forces, but every new person brings new opinions and wishes, and balancing those becomes more difficult with every new member of your coalition. This explains some of the perennial disorganization within the Democratic Party, which is more heterogeneous than the Republican Party.

The best way to manage the competing interests is to reduce the number of things everyone has to agree on in order to maintain the union. You don't have to actually believe other races are equal; you just have to believe they're equal before the law. You don't have to believe homosexuality is moral; you just have to believe it deserves protection under the law.

Hillary Clinton used the slogan "stronger together" in her 2016 run. I don't disagree with the principle, only the smugness and certainty with which it was used. Being together might make us stronger, but only if we realize how much work it is to keep everyone together. We're not going to sprinkle slogans over differences and wake up to unity. Unity involves minimizing the space we need to agree on to keep the union working, which means not fighting over things that don't matter. It involves realizing how deeply other people hold some beliefs and how hard it will be be to get them to bend. It involves realizing how fragile a democracy is. It means cooperating with some people who hold beliefs you personally find abominable, because there is no other choice. And maybe it involves realizing that the compromise with others is only a temporary one, meant to achieve nothing more than comfort and peace in this life. You might even use the word "secular" to describe it. We can be in the world and work with others but not be of the world by agreeing with them.

James Mattis, in his critique of Trump this week, went beyond just criticizing the President to a hope for union. He called what demonstrators are seeking a "wholesome and unifying demand." Nearly everyone in the union can understand the core desire of the demonstrators: to not feel fear of the police. Sticking to that desire as the central aim will likely continue to garner sympathy. Attacking police as thugs or state-sponsored terrorists will not. I'm not speaking about emotional truths here, but practical ones. That kind of talk won't keep the union together, which means a failure to achieve goals.

Moreover, in attacking anyone who doesn't immediately fall into ideological lockstep with whatever saucy Tweet someone just blasted out means you're going to be attacking people you might later find could have been someone you could have worked with. For how long did we call Bush, McCain, and Romney racists? Do we regret now any of the things we said about them? Do we see now how demonizing someone slightly to our right can end up bringing us someone far to our right? (Or whatever political space Trump is occupying on a particular day, depending on what news he watched that morning.)

Mattis also hoped the people could find unity in spite of Trump:

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

Wouldn't it be something if the most polarizing president in history ended up making us somehow more united, if he helped us to turn back some of the increasing polarization that has built up since the first troops from World War II started arriving back home? To do that, the first step is to realize it won't be easy. It means people who deeply disagree about issues on which they will never change each others' minds will have to get along. It means people who fundamentally dislike each other will have to get along. It means realizing unity isn't a fuzzy liberal's dream, it's a necessity we can't live without.