Thread by @JuliusGoat

POLARIZATION AND STRIFE

Let me suggest something that might seem counterintuitive: We have rarely been *less* polarized as a country.

Am I saying we’re not polarized? Far from it. I’m saying we’re miscategorizing what polarization even is.

getrevue.co/profile/julius…

We’ve never been more polarized in most of our lifetimes, at least that’s the word.

"This polarization is tearing us apart,“ says the pundit to a nodding panel. "Cancel culture is out of control. We need to stop fighting ourselves, learn to build bridges to each other.”

*We* and *us* are such interesting words. They leave a trail; you can follow them back to the lair of their underlying assumptions.

“We have never been more polarized as a country,” for example, says something clear about who is considered a part of this country, and who is not.

If one becomes adept at following the trail of pronouns, one might almost start to observe that the idea of “polarized” is very much a question of whose perspective you’ve decided to take up, and where you set your poles.

The *us* in “this polarization is tearing us apart” seems never to mean “the people our society ignores and harms, either for identity and fortune; the people our society ignores for its own lazy comfort” but rather “the critical mass of people willing to license injustice.”

Yes, and what do *we* mean when *we* say “we’ve never been so polarized,” anyway?

What if instead *we* said “It’s been a long time since the reality of injustice has been made so unavoidably present to otherwise comfortable people”?

Consider the idea that treating certain people as if they don’t matter enough to care about their dignity and their lives creates a much deeper polarization than any fight over the holiday dinner table or on the airwaves over whether or not it’s good to do so.

And: the more peaceful that subjugation, the greater the polarization.

Consider a corollary, that as people stop going along with this unnatural injustice, it will decrease the peace of that subjugation; will increase resentment and strife, for as long as there are people still willing to fight to subjugate others.

But the strife isn’t polarization.

The strife may be the first early sign that we might be willing to stop being polarized by bigotry and injustice.

For many people, I suspect the increase in this kind of strife isn’t experienced as polarization at all, but solidarity.

Consider that for many, 37% isn’t a polarization metric, but a solidarity metric.

It has to be said, we’re still a very polarized country, even by this metric, even if polarization has somewhat decreased.

https://twitter.com/whignewtons/status/1468425005033836550?s=20

There exist many willing to fight for the degradation of other human beings, and they are supported by a critical mass of comfortable people, because supporting injustice remains the path of ease.

And some people ARE those humans, who have had no choice but to hide or fight.

For those people, the sight of ostensible allies willing to compromise in order to reduce visible strife and maintain comfortable relationships would represent not a diminishment of polarization, but rather a demoralizing and entirely expected reversion to our polarized norm.

So now, some otherwise comfortable people have been drawn or shocked into awareness of this old struggle, and many of them are willing for the first time to endure some portion of the strife that comes with insisting that *they* are *us* too.

Solidarity, not polarization.

*We* are fighting about that with some others among *us* who want polarization not solidarity—because we know that even though *we* are fighting *them*, *they* are *us*, too … and *we* demand better from *ourselves.*

Not the beginning of “us versus them.” The end of it.

This seems like a pretty worthy fight, and worth the strife.

We should hope that those among us who have picked up this old fight for the first time continue it, not abandon it—if we are interested in decreasing our national polarization, that is.

Let us never build bridges to connect us to back to injustice, but rather build channels designed to carry us all away from it.

Let us refashion our priorities and our society until justice becomes the way of ease and it’s injustice that carries the heaviest burdens.

This may be a lot of work, and it may bear a heavy cost. But it’s worthy work, and a reward worth the price.

That’s my word for this morning: let’s do that work.

May we never abandon our brothers and sisters for the sake of comfort and ease. Increase the awareness of injustice, and thus the discomfort.

And may we become even *less* polarized than we are now as a result, no matter the strife.