This post was inspired by a comment left here by an occasional commenter. On what issues is there presently a consensus in the United States?
Let’s first define what I mean by “consensus”. The dictionary definition of “consensus” is “general agreement”. I don’t mean that for a simple reason: I think there are very few issues on which there is general agreement. No, what I mean is issues on which 65% or more of Americans agree.
Since the comment was left I’ve been looking for such issues and have found very few of them but there are a few so I’ll list them here.
Strengthening the economy
Pew Research has found that 71% of Americans think that strengthening the economy is an important issue. What that means of would entail, of course, is left undefined. That’s how it is with many of the issues on which there is a consensus.
Healthcare
There is no consensus in favor of “Medicare for All”. There is a consensus supporting a “public option” for healthcare. Even the majority support for “Medicare for All” erodes quickly if voters are informed that their taxes would rise to pay for it. How all of that translates into an actual, workable policy eludes me which I think explains why every state that has considered a single-payer system has abandoned it.
Immigration
A consensus of Americans believe that immigrants who meet certain criteria should have a path to citizenship, that the large number of immigrants crossing our southern border is a problem, are unhappy about how unaccompanied minors who show up on our southern border are cared for, and that our border control and enforcement personnel should receive better training.
Military
There is no longer a consensus of Americans supporting our military. A majority do, however.
Congress
There is a consensus of Americans who do not believe that Congress is doing a good job. That has been true for most of the last thirteen years. In what would appear to be a paradox a majority approve of their own Congressional representative.
That’s just about it.
If you find any other issues on which there is a consensus (as defined above) among Americans, please leave it in the comments along with a link supporting it.
We could perhaps add a consensus belief that our biggest problems are being caused by “those radical partisans over there,” although since no one agrees WHICH radical partisans are the ones causing the problems, I’m not convinced I have met your criterion.
With that said, meta-consensus (consensus THAT, not WHO) is the first step toward recruiting allies, so that problems can be jointly defined, so that jointly acceptable solutions can be sought. Without that meta-consensus, it’s just endless battles to the political horizon. Modern technology makes that unsurvivable.
What to do?
The standard partisan position is “it’s no use reasoning with those guys, so lets just marginalize them.”
The standard counterposition has four parts: (1) networked tribalism means you can’t successfully marginalize “them” anyway, not anymore; (2) attempting such gives “them” political cover to attempt the same to you; (3) somehow, “reasoning with” (rather than “reasoning at”) never gets tried; and (4) without a de-escalatory framework, all politics spirals into a fight to the death (so we had better do something, and quick).
The challenge is simple/hard: while achieving a Radical Consensus (100% agreement) is easy(!!!) to do, its initial findings are far removed from making actual policy recommendations; so far removed, that no political players can be bothered to look in the necessary place.
How would I do it? Zoom out until consensus, universality, and self-evidence converge in a handful of self-evident truths. Reason forward together from there, ensuring that consensus and universality are conserved at each step, until something interesting happens.
Deep down at the universal roots of human decision-making, that great driver of political conflict, there lurk three self-evident ways in which humans do NOT vary from one another:
(1) everyone has limited attention;
(2) pattern-based intelligence compensates with shortcuts;
(3) all of that happens in a body defended by instincts.
Spin those together into a political framework, WITHOUT losing the thread of radical consensus (ensuring it is carried forward at every step), until a useful framework emerges, and you’ve got something worthwhile. This, I think I can do.
Or could do, anyway, if the world would slow down a bit. It’s looking like I may have run out of time. I hope not.
Thanks for this post, Dave.