Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about our national divide, America’s ongoing “Culture Quarrel,” made even more pronounced by the pandemic. I decided to probe deeper into my column archive to see if it yielded any helpful insights. Here’s a selection:
Our deadly game of Us vs. Them – April 28, 1999 (after the Oklahoma City bombing, right after Columbine High School): “Everyone these days seems to have a ‘Them’ or two. The only thing we seem to have in common is our eagerness to disconnect.”
We need to know the rules of engagement – Nov. 7, 2001: “We’re talking about the free exchange of ideas, not a free-fire zone. Our model for public discourse is not paintball. You don’t aim your ideas at your ideological opponents. You lay your ideas on the table, unprotected, to stand or fall on their merits. … Sneering at others’ ideas or mocking and insulting those who espouse them is not generally considered an effective rebuttal. … Haughtiness and name-calling are never adequate substitutes for a well-reasoned argument.”
There’s only one way to win, and that’s to stop fighting – Nov. 8, 2006: “That doesn’t mean ignoring our political differences. It doesn’t mean shutting up and avoiding people of opposing viewpoints. It means engaging one another in a different way. It means disarming and refusing to assume the worst about one another. It means actively listening to the other side and according them basic courtesy. It means knowing what you believe in and standing up for it, but not in a belligerent way. It means surrendering your sacred stereotypes about the other side and refusing to put your words in their mouths (“What you’re really saying is …”). It means being curious about how the other person came to their point of view in the first place. There’s a story behind every deeply held belief, waiting to be told.”
Is politics determined by temperament? – March 7, 2007: “We all say we want to change the things we can, accept the things we can’t change, and have enough wisdom to know the difference. You might have noticed that progressives emphasize the first part of that formula, conservatives emphasize the second part, and everyone thinks they can tell the difference. But if we spend all our time accepting the things we think we can’t change, we’ll never find out if we could have changed them. … Sometimes it takes a little wisdom just to recognize that you don’t have enough wisdom.”
Connection vs. division defines us – June 4, 2008: “We are supposed to be dedicated to the proposition that there’s only one kind of people, but Americans have traditionally insisted on two — Us vs. Them, Good Guys vs. Bad Guys. We seem to need an enemy to define who we are. As Dorothy Parker famously observed, there are only two kinds of people — those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t. Americans need to be the kind who don’t, but we aren’t. We’re not uniters, we’re dividers.”
The end of a 30-year filibuster – Nov. 19, 2008: Conservatives made the free market our state religion and destroyed Americans’ belief in government. They were wrong on both counts. … Government isn’t a necessary evil. Government is necessary, and if it’s necessary, it’s worth doing well. I’ve been saying this to conservatives for 30 years and every single time they dismiss it as if it were the height of naivete.”
Join the civility crusade – Nov. 30, 2011: “The nation’s current ‘culture war’ goes back at least to the Republican Convention in 1992. Pat Buchanan famously said, ‘There is a religious war going on in this country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.’ When you declare war on your fellow citizens, incivility is sure to follow, and it did. … We need a civility crusade. Recognizing the limits of human nature, I suggest starting small and propose banning the words ‘idiot’ and ‘moron’ from our civic conversation. … I don’t see this conflict ending any time soon, but we can reduce the incivility if we agree not to make insults our default setting.”
First find something we can agree on – April 8, 2015: “The problem is we disagree on so much: abortion, guns, religion vs. science, church vs. state, the role of government, taxes, patriotism, immigration, sexual orientation, economic inequality, climate change. The list is long. No surprise that we have a hard time talking about them. The problem is we can’t find anything to agree on. That might sound obvious, but it’s the key. People who strongly disagree should not try to talk about their disagreements until they first find something to agree on. Something core.”
Trump’s gift: A new patriotism (‘Here We Believe’ lawn signs) – June 7, 2017: “This is the new patriotism, stating plainly and firmly what this country stands for. It’s good for kids to grow up around people who have the courage of their convictions and whose beliefs are welcoming, inclusive and affirming, which is what America is about. It’s a patriotism that honors more than our military might. It honors the courage to live in an open society. … Thanks, ironically, to Trump, a new patriotism is emerging on our front lawns.”
Extending a hand to Trump supporters – Jan. 20, 2021: “Join us, in being so much stronger together than we can ever be apart. Let us show the world that democracy is resilient, that we can come together, that we can repair the breach. That we can repair the bridges, physical and spiritual, that have collapsed, bridges that must be built, and rebuilt, from both sides. Let us set an example that our dream of democracy is tested and tough, that the soul of this nation may be contested, but never violently, only through honest, respectful dialogue. Join us in admitting our mistakes and atoning for them. Let us become a better nation by becoming better people. Let us show one another only the better angels of our nature. We have seen our lesser angels dominate for too long. We are capable of more. We can do better.”
But we have not done better and it’s discouraging. I don’t know how to dialogue with those who believe the Big Lie about the last election and who believe the Jan. 6 insurrection was no Big Deal.
Maybe “opposed” is just who we are and we simply have to come to terms with that.
I do, however, believe we must stop using the term “culture war.” From now on, I’m calling it our “culture quarrel.” We aren’t enemies. We’re citizens who for a variety of reasons don’t trust one another and don’t trust our institutions.
We’re paying a price for that mistrust. And we won’t heal what ails us until the price is more than we’re willing to pay for living in the Divided States of America.