Come Together, Right Now: Unity without Centrism in the Biden Administration

During his address on the eve of his victory, President Elect Joseph R. Biden asked both his supporters and his opponents to do something that neither want to do: to give each other a chance. Now, it may seem a tradition for the President Elect to declare that he ( “he” as it has always been) will be a president for all people, those who voted for him and those who voted against him, in order to “unify the country” under his administration. Biden is smart to italicize unity at the outset of his presidency, for a broken nation is mathematically weaker than a unified one. However, under a polarized and bloody political battlefield, true unity within our political system will not come about peacefully. Unless, that is, we seek it instead from the outside of the system.

Over the past four years, specifically in the past 11 months, a media phenomenon has emerged regarding objective political journalism: the need to transcend political neutrality in order to uphold the truth. For example: during the Trump administration, journalists and fact checkers need to present Trump as a frequent liar in order to communicate that he is not telling the truth. This may, to his supporters, seem biased, when really the threshold for truth has been displaced and journalists need to do more work to counterweigh that.

This sentiment of transcending conventional bias lines to call out injustice or lies has been echoed in recently-circulating social media posts that draw the line between having a certain political belief and denying someone’s right to live. As the country undergoes a racial renaissance, we have been better able to identify where political alignments stop and racism starts, and for journalists, where preserving truth is more prominent than preserving political neutrality. With a lower tolerance for social inequality, we are holding Biden more accountable than we ever have a Democratic president to distance ourselves as far from those whose political beliefs mean they’d like to see some of us dead and gone.

When Biden speaks of “giving each other a chance,” he speaks of moderate politics, of Democrats and Republicans meeting in the middle. He speaks against this sentiment held by liberal youth to veer as far away from the right as possible. Trump’s loss has birthed a political environment where these liberals, who came of age during his administration, are able to see a livable future: one which enacts the Green New Deal, protects marriage and pro-choice rights, and abolishes institutionalized racism. Moderatism, as Biden suggests, would force the emerging radical left to compromise on their beliefs, which has the potential to make real progress toward an equal future. Because of the current nature of each party, moderatism or centrism asks the radical left to sacrifice their rights to better accommodate the hatred and bigotry of the radical right.

Maybe it is best for each party to go their separate ways. The space in between each radical end of the political spectrum is shrinking anyway, so why try to bring everyone into that space, especially if everyone will be unhappy? You can’t ask a trans woman of color to live happily in a country with white supremacist men whose identities are built around the denial of her existence.

The truth is, we can’t come about progress without unity, for each radical action to advance social justice will be counteracted by an equally radical effort to devolve it. In order to move forward, we need to depoliticize instead of center. We must lift the political divides that segregate America so as to expose each individual’s true beliefs untethered to their political party. Once this happens, we as Americans may be able to agree that our highly-debated topics such as mask-wearing and climate change stem not from politics, but from science.

Depoliticization without depolarization gives the opportunity for Americans to shape their beliefs based on their individual, human experiences, and provides more room for open-minded empathy. And for those who decide that they really are racist deep down inside, we can exclude them, we can hold reconciliation trials, we can redraw US territory lines, but we need not and should not compromise to suit their needs. To do so would be to function under the American myth that we must accept a reality less equal than we the reality deserve.