An Election Full of Sound and Fury

There’s a sort of optimism, too, in Michael Gerson’s Washington Post column:

The 2020 presidential election — conducted during a deadly pandemic, accompanied by racial protests, in the wake of massive economic dislocation — felt like it should be transformative. But what has unfolded is really a mirror. And most Americans seem happy with their reflected image.

Trumpians feel confirmed in their belief that a hostile establishment and hidden “deep state” are conspiring against their dignity and influence. Democratic progressives feel confirmed in their belief that the politics of compromise has gained liberalism nothing. Democratic centrists feel confirmed in their belief that they are saving liberalism from political oblivion. No large group of voters came away chastened or sobered.

More than any other reason, this is because politics has become a function of culture. A factual debate can be adjudicated. Policy differences can be compromised. Even an ideological conflict can be bridged or transcended. But if our differences are an expression of our identities — rural vs. urban, religious vs. secular, nationalist vs. cosmopolitan — then political loss threatens a whole way of life.

Where’s the optimism? You may well ask. Here:

It encourages me that organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute are producing the innovative policy proposals (see AEI’s “Governing Priorities”) that an ambitious Republican reformer might run with.

And there’s something practical that citizens can do to address political polarization. It is important to the cohesion of our society that people keep a portion of their deepest selves off limits to politics entirely — the place where kindness, decency and hospitality dwell. Any political belief (really, any belief) that causes us to refuse friendship or fellowship to nonbelievers is wrong and corrosive, no matter how noble or necessary it may seem.

I’m not as optimistic as he. I think that as long as there’s good money to be made in division and treating people with whom you disagree as enemies and beyond disdain, that’s what will happen.

And this convinces me he does not follow social media:

In a divided nation, Americans need to defend a space in their lives where cable news does not reach, where social media does not incite, and where the basic, natural tendency is to treat other people like human beings. This offers not just the prospect of greater tolerance, but the hope of healing.

What space would that be? Google and Facebook know what you’re doing on a second to second basis. They’re like not particularly benign Santa Clauses: they know when you are sleeping, they know when you’re awake, they know if you’ve been bad or good. They’re measuring your pulse rate and your breathing.