Should You Have Friends Across the Aisle?

The problem with the modern liberal, from a fellow liberal.

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I have always believed that calling out your own side is invaluable to maintaining integrity, yet I see less and less of that in the modern media and political landscape. Especially now among the left.

Lately on social media, I have seen an epidemic of ideas and arguments that advocate for important issues (good!) that are recycled around without any critical analysis or consideration given to its counter-arguments or one's own original thought (bad). Particularly among liberals who attended my high school, the continuous reposts and retweets have traveled further and further to the brink of insanity, which is where we are now.

In the midst of the election, I began seeing posts about having a moral obligation to vote for Joe Biden because if you vote for Trump, a third-party, or don’t vote at all, you are contributing to the removal of various human rights. Here is one example I could find:

Marginalized communities have certainly had their voices suppressed for far too long and are often underrepresented completely in circles of power. Advocacy and awareness of their lack of representation are needed. But at the same time, I have to question when advocacy for the marginalized is eclipsed by patronizingly speaking on behalf of the marginalized while coming from a place that could not be more distant from them. I refer to this as the conflict between advocacy and spokespersonery (a made-up word).

Before you exit out of this webpage and figuratively come at me with your pitchforks (please don't hurt me), hear me out.

Especially after the unexpected (albeit small) increase in turnout among Black and Latino communities we have seen for President Trump over the past few days, which has been the highest for Republicans since 1960, there are some hard-to-swallow questions to ask ourselves before condemning every Trump voter as a racist, homophobe, and sexist. I also can’t help but mention that Trump also improved with Republican voters as well despite the millions of dollars poured into the Lincoln Project and the celebration of endorsements from the architects of the Iraq War.

Questions to ask ourselves before the eternal condemnation of Trump voters:

1. Are members of marginalized communities who turn out for Trump discriminatory or do they just have self-hatred?

2. If every Republican voter is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc, does the Democratic Party have a cap on the number of voters they should interact with?

3. What factors actually explain why people, such as two-time Obama voters, go to Trump despite the demeaning things he says over and over again? Are these people racists?

4. And finally, can I be friends with a conservative person?

For the sake of time that I should be allocating to studying right now, I will focus primarily on question 4.

My answer is yes. Being friends with a conservative or someone with differing viewpoints than you is essential to developing strong positions, testing your values, and intellectual growth in general. It is problematic to propose that ideologies should diverge into two separate bubbles when the ideologies we are discussing are not monoliths! Saying no to question 4 demonstrates a false calculation being made about Trump voters and a lack of understanding of why Trump became President to begin with.

For the Trump voters that this post is directed at, racial rhetoric and the behavior of the President do not seem to surpass economic issues in importance. This reality is okay to accept. In fact, racial issues do not surpass the economy or coronavirus in importance for the majority of Democrats. But the bigger issue with this post is the assumption that a Biden administration would fare better for marginalized communities than a Trump administration. While I agree with this, such a statement can and should be heavily disputed because the policy conversation surrounding racial inequality is wide-ranging and subjective. Some believe that Democrats’ stance on racial issues only exacerbates inequalities rather than improves them and it is a valid concern to have. Treating the conversation about racial issues objectively and shutting down debate, only plays into the notion that the Democratic party is full of elite urbanites more focused on policing cultural issues than actually fixing the underlying problems that create such issues.

Part of why the scourge of social media infographics has been of concern to me is the convergence of thought that I see among my liberal peers. The left does not comprise of the same positions on each issue, even on race. Some believe in economic upliftment of marginalized communities can help heal racial inequalities, while others believe representation and rhetoric that galvanizes people across racial lines is a more appealing solution. This example encapsulates a healthy debate that is going on within the Democratic party in which there are multiple factions that reflect a true diversity of thought. But you probably knew that.

What you possibly may be ignoring, however, is that the same diversity of thought is reflected within the Republican party as well. Ignoring other sides is extremely destructive, especially when there are so many places where agreement can be forged, particularly on economic issues.

A channel that I follow which considers these fringe areas of agreement is called "Rising" on The Hill's YouTube channel. On this show, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti represent the "New Left" and "New Right" and the areas of compromise between them. They speak almost directly to the statistical anomalies of the 15% crossover support that existed between Trump and Bernie Sanders and those two-time Obama voters who voted for Trump in 2016. They speak about a political realignment that does not demonize the other side, rather it unites both sides against a common enemy: the Washington establishment and those who ensure that it remains powerful. One of the harmful side effects of this status quo being racial inequality. 

The truth is that not unlike the many progressives in the Democratic party who "settled" for Joe Biden, many conservatives compromised for Trump. The failure of Biden to provide any coherent message on the economy or health care turned away voters in Florida, for example, where Trump was trusted more on the economy by nearly 70%. A vote for Trump has also become synonymous with the rejection of the establishment.

This establishment consists of the frequent ignorance and divisiveness of the cultural left I described early on that seems to turn more and more people away despite agreement on economic issues. Empirical evidence of this being what we saw in Florida. Many Floridians, which included Latinos and other marginalized communities, showed out for Trump, despite voting in favor of a rather progressive economic proposal of raising the minimum wage to $15. Other evidence is shown in exit poll after exit poll that shows widespread support for government-run health care and the raising of taxes on wealthy people. It is a testament to both Democrats' and Republicans' ability to turn every election into a culture war that these voters are not what Fox News would proclaim as Socialists!

This establishment also consists of technocrats, Wall Street-ers, Silicon Valley titans, and the managerial class who are blamed for inextricably screwing working-class Americans economically. Because of their lobbying for financialization, free trade, and other policies aggravating economic inequalities and hurting economic mobility, the working-class life has been disintegrating. It should be sad to us liberals that people look to Trump, a life-long member of this establishment, as a legitimate rejection of this ruling class and not as the phony he really is.

Then why do people vote for him if he is a phony? Now it is legitimate to question how many of the voters I speak about, primarily white working-class people, are drawn to him because of Trump's cultural rhetoric or his economic nationalist message. But the unquantifiable fraction of people that are drawn to Trumponomics is not given anything close to a viable alternative.

Part of the problem is that the Democratic party, which used to legitimately represent the working class, has been consumed by identity politics and elitist, out-of-touch, patronizing assholes. They have left behind the ideals the party encapsulated during the Post-World War II Consensus and shifted to becoming the party of Clintonites. My characterization of the party is encompassed within the choosing of Kamala Harris as the Vice Presidential nominee.

Representation is important, in fact, it is what got me into politics. Funny enough, I was inspired by people such as Andrew Yang and Ro Khanna because I liked seeing people who check off the same box under the race column as me in the public space. But what kept me listening to them was their ideas and principles that they put at the forefront of their campaigns.

Kamala Harris is of Indian descent just like me, and while she got my attention in the 2020 Democratic Primary, she utterly failed to keep it. She seems unprincipled, has an oppressive record as attorney general, and is as soft as you can be with big tech. 

If this election has shown anything, it's that Trumpism and the mistrust in the Democratic party are very much alive and will continue to thrive. The fact that people mistrust Democrats so much that they are willing to vote for Trump, is partly an issue with the Democratic Party. My final suggestion is to try and understand the opposing side rather than shut down debate and become enclosed within our own echo chambers. If nearly 70 million people vote for something, it is in our best interest to fully understand why in order to move forward at all. You may be surprised to see where there are areas of agreement.