Inaugural addresses are meant to be aspirational, so President Biden might as well have doubled down on his call for unity in his speech on Wednesday.
Presidents have made such appeals going back to George Washington, and after the events of Jan. 6, there’s much to be said for more unity, or at least less poisonous division, and Biden’s emphasis on unity was deeply felt and entirely sincere.
“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path,” he said. “Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.”
Who can disagree?
But by making unity his goal and the standard by which he will be judged, Biden is setting himself up for failure. When Biden was walking the final leg of the inaugural parade route, a couple of CNN journalists shouted out, “President Biden, can you unite the country?”
He didn’t answer, but if he had, honesty should have compelled him to say, “Actually, probably not.” Just as no one really got tired of all the winning under President Donald Trump, no one is going to get tired of all the unifying under Biden.
The problem is that calls for unity can carry an expectation of unity, i.e., the belief that truly reasonable people can’t or shouldn’t disagree in good faith on matters of profound significance. This is how self-styled unifiers end up becoming high-handed and divisive (Biden’s ex-boss, former President Barack Obama, often fell into this trap).
Regardless, there are deep factors in our politics and society that make unity more difficult to achieve than when Biden came up in politics.
The media landscape is not as conducive to fostering — and de facto enforcing — a consensus as it was in the pre-cable, pre-Internet era of three broadcast networks. Attempts to impose a consensus via decisions about what content to allow and suppress on today’s social networks and Web sites won’t succeed — in fact, acts of censorship directed overwhelmingly at conservatives, besides being wrong, will fuel a backlash that’s already well underway.
As issues with a cultural charge have moved to the fore in recent decades, divisions go deeper and are less prone to compromise or negotiation. The difference, for instance, between the 1619 Project and the Trump 1776 Commission (immediately canceled by Biden) involves profound questions about the nature of our country that can’t be worked out at a meeting of the House Appropriations Committee.
The Link LonkJanuary 22, 2021 at 08:13AM
https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/forget-unity-bidens-moralizing-mantra-is-more-likely-to-divide/
Forget 'unity': Biden's moralizing mantra is more likely to divide - New York Post
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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