Open letter to Joe Biden
To the President-Elect
Dear President-Elect Biden,
You are inheriting a mess. Not only because of the health issues due to the coronavirus and the economic decline it caused, but because of the divisions in our country. The previous president fed that split. He didn’t create it, but he intensified and amplified it. That makes your ambition to be a unifying president even harder.
We need to recognize that those who voted for Donald Trump identified with him. Isabel Wilkerson draws on a concept from Erich Fromm when she says in her book, Caste, “The . . . group sees itself in the . . . leader, becomes one with the leader, sees his fortunes and his fate as their own.” That means that Trump supporters feel rejected because others have rejected the former president. This explains the underlying feeling described in the following Facebook post by a friend of mine that Trump supporters feel that liberals “have so profoundly abused them and Mr. Trump over these past five years and more. They seem very much to think of themselves as justifiably angry victims, and perhaps that they're now owed something as the price of re-gaining a measure of their good will.”
Obviously, you shouldn’t apologize for having won the election. But we, as a country, can apologize for having neglected the issues that those who voted for Donald Trump care about. Manufacturers who close factories because they can produce cheaper goods abroad and ignore the employees that contributed to their success contributed to this. The less expensive imports we bring in from abroad that substitute for goods made in the heartland contribute to this. Everyday consumers who eat the food produced in our breadbasket without realizing the sacrifices farmers make to produce it. The anger felt by Trump supporters and those who no longer have a productive role signal this is important.
What can you do? You need to confront the issues head on. The decline in the way of life of rural America is a problem we have ignored for too long. It isn’t as simple as making sure they have broadband internet — as if that was simple in itself. The economics of rural life have changed and become harder. We don’t value physical work the same way we used to.
Having the government come in and “solve” the problem for them probably won’t work either. They believe in self-reliance and don’t want government handouts. Ronald Reagan may have made it up when he said, “ ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’ are the nine most terrifying words”, but the feeling is there for some people. Government interference itself would just breed resentment. But it might be possible to find a way to encourage each community to find their own way, their own solution — to face what they have control over and what they don’t have control over. Can we encourage a new kind of self-reliance and community building? This fits with their mindset.
But there’s second layer that is important to understand in order to win over Trump supporters, which are the values that underpin the positions they take. What President Trump did was to negatively signal those values to his supporters, one that the left calls “dog whistles,” in a way that allowed his supporters to know that he was with them. It is easy to condemn the nasty way he and other politicians do that signaling. The left has made people aware of the undercurrent. But by making these comments in such a coded way, Trump has allowed his supporters to disavow the nuance. They don’t believe they are racists. As one Trump supporter opined in the New York Times, “He (Trump) was labeled a racist but funded historically black colleges and created opportunity zones with Senator Tim Scott. He was able to sign meaningful prison reform legislation.” Similarly, when asked about President Trump’s misogyny, a female Trump supporter was able to identify females, such as Kayleigh McEnany, that Trump has relied on.
What President Trump did so brilliantly and nastily was to evoke the core values of social conservatives: patriotism, sacredness, and respect for authority. These values are not as important to the progressive part of this country. This is the fundamental disconnect that has led to our divisiveness.
How can we heal this divide? We all need to recognize that the values that conservatives hold dear are important; not just for them, but for everyone. To function well as a country, we need a strong country, we need to hold some things sacred, and we need a strong decisive leader. And that leader needs to be able to speak to the values of all the people, not just some.
There’s a third layer to the problem. We need to recognize the fear of the future. Social conservatives want to conserve the past because they view it as better than the present. They need to believe that the rest of the country also wants to maintain the good parts of the past.
President-Elect Biden: I believe that if you can at least start to address the problems of rural life, if you can speak to the values that social conservatives hold dear in a positive way and if you can allay their fears, then you can begin to achieve the unity you desire. Good luck, I’ll be rooting for you!