Since election day, I’ve heard calls for unity, for our country to “come together.” Such calls make a great deal of sense, considering just how malignant the presidential campaign felt. Presidential campaigns, by their very nature—because they are contending not only over policy but over the direction the country should head—are disputatious. But this one, holy crap! We haven’t seen anything quite this acrimonious since Biggie vs. Tupac back in 1996.
Donald called her a crook enabler. Hillary called him an incompetent troll. And those were some of the nicer things to come out of this campaign cycle. So, it’s understandable that the country feels torn, almost exactly down the middle.
Also understandable is the impulse to unify—at least on the part of half the electorate. The other half, it seems, isn’t nearly so sanguine about the prospects of getting the band back together.
Even pleas about “the good of the country” and having “won by the rules” don’t seem persuasive to those steadfastly opposed to a Donald Trump presidency. Hearing that our country has a history of coming together after contentious political battles isn’t making a dent in peoples’ resolve to hold out against a quick confederation.
I know this resistance to harmony is bewildering to many who believe that it is incumbent on the losers in an election to get back in the traces and pull in the same direction:
”We won. You lost. Get over your hurt feelings and support the new President.”
That’s how it’s supposed to work, right?
Of course, as many angry people have pointed out, it’s not like the losers in the last two presidential elections swallowed their pride, found their civic spirit, and chipped in to help President Obama. Quite to the contrary, from the opposition leadership on down, they broke almost every rule of political and civic etiquette to stand athwart him.
But I’m not arguing here for opposition to Donald Trump out of spite, even though that’s a strategic play with real practical benefits for the new President’s political adversaries. Lord knows, the GOP made a lot of hay by blocking all traffic going through the intersection, then loudly blaming the mayor for the congestion.
On the flip side, those who are now celebrating the incoming administration have said, “For the past eight years, you moaned about the fact that we didn’t support your president. Not supporting our President now is the height of hypocrisy.”
At first glance, such an argument has the veneer of reasonableness. What’s good for the goose and all that.
But here’s the problem with that argument, and the reason behind why so many people are reluctant to reunite: Barack Obama never had a history—in public or in private—of vowing to do damage to virtually every non-white, non-hetero, non-cisgender, non-male constituency in the country. That he took steps toward limiting the power of the powerful can in no sane world be compared to abolishing the power of the powerless.
And here’s the thing about unity, calls for unity too often come from a place of privilege. It sounds like the people in power trying to get those without power back in line, so there isn’t any more disruption to the system. That is to say, calls for unity by the folks in charge sound self-serving to everyone else.
The problem for those being called to unify at this point is that they’re not just being called to suck it up and “give the new President a chance.” From their perspective, they’re being asked to embrace the man and his followers, who are the very same people who’ve publicly committed themselves to making life miserable for so many.
To folks on the margins, it’s like the chickens being asked to give the fox the benefit of the doubt. Who in her right mind would so willingly suspend disbelief to take that bet?
I can hear the howls of opprobrium: “You’re overreacting. You’re the one keeping things stirred up. Don’t you know that being such a public alarmist is dangerous to the fabric of our civic life?”
My response is: “No. What’s dangerous to the civc fabric is the normalization of bigotry and violence. And key to that normalization is the shocking penchant, in the face of the alarming rise in hate crimes and the speech that nurtures it, for acting as though the concerns of the threatened and afflicted are merely the hysterical response of malcontents.”
Republicans can’t understand why the people who opposed Donald Trump aren’t more willing to let bygones be bygones and come together.
But people who opposed Donald Trump on moral grounds can’t understand how his supporters could be so foolish as to believe it’s even possible to unify with people who’ve made it abundantly clear they don’t want you.