Biden said he wanted to bring Americans together — why didn't he?
An op-ed on Biden's polarizing approaches, and what we can learn from that
I wrote an op-ed titled “Why Biden failed at achieving unity — and what we can learn from that”; it was published in Deseret News.
A few thoughts:
Between the pro-Trump and anti-Trump “sides” that make up our polarization dynamic in America, I’m very much anti-Trump. Some anti-Trump people will perceive my criticism of Biden as hurting the cause and helping the “bad guys.” I see those instincts as faulty; our instincts on how to behave when in conflict end up amplifying the conflict. I think it’s very important to critique polarizing behaviors from people on “our side.” I think it’s very important to recognize and work against our conflict-amplifying instincts (and doing that is something that also helps people achieve their goals).
Some anti-Trump people will respond, “Why are you focusing on Biden when Trump is so much worse?” (as some comments on the piece do). But one can think “the other side contributes more to our divides” while still seeing that you and your allies have much to work on in that regard. Conflict has a way of making people not care about resolving the conflict; that’s why conflicts tend to ramp up in intensity. If we’re going to improve things, we’ll need more people, on the right and left, to strive to reduce toxicity — even as they think “the other side is worse.”
Deseret News isn’t my first choice for op-eds; it’s a pretty small outlet, and they are owned by the Mormon Church (nothing against the church, just a bit unusual for a news outlet). That said, I think they’ve done some great work lately in covering the problem of polarization (including devoting a whole edition to it); that is something basically no major outlets do, and we need much more of that. Also, as I’ve often said, I would generally publish pieces in just about any outlet if I think I’m persuading a few people in that audience to embrace my ideas. Unfortunately, our divides lead to many people looking for excuses to ignore this work; and this includes an inclination some have to use the outlets you write for to ignore the ideas (e.g., a liberal thinking something like, “Zach writes for Newsweek and a Mormon publication? I knew I was right to distrust his ideas.”) The logical mistake of “guilt by association” is embraced by many people, including a lot of sophisticated people (for example, Thomas Zimmer and Shannon McGregor, in a podcast episode of Zimmer’s, denigrated depolarization/bridge-building work because one of the Koch brothers was supportive of it). Conflict can really warp our cognition.
Related to this topic, a few months ago I wrote a depolarization-aimed speech I would have liked to have seen Biden give.
