An Election Reflection: Sounds of Silence

In defeat, diagnosis proliferates. In victory, triumphalism conceals. Myriad pundits from right to left are all explaining what transpired on November 5th and all sharing the one dominant quality of our information ecosystem — certainty. 

It feels like the most valuable response ought to be self-questioning, marinated in silence. Silence like that of the High Priest Aaron, who saw his children incinerated in a fiery eruption of divine anger. Or the silence of Abraham and Isaac as they walked together, bound in some macabre expression of sacrifice and covenant. 

What might we Americans reflect upon if we were to take a period of silence?

1. Whether we are on the “winning” or “losing” side of our reality TV election – in which the Biden-Harris administration was clearly fired and which the late media theorist Neil Postman would have characterized as a way of “amusing ourselves to death” – we might reflect on how the majority of people in this country feel a toxic mix of fear, anger, precariousness, loneliness, and uncertainty, all masked by a combustible mix of stridency, self-righteousness, demonization, nastiness, and hate. And we might explore how our culture’s embrace of individualism – whether new age self-help liberalism or pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps conservatism, both of which sever the relationship between our psychological health and our social reality – might be contributing to our diseases of despair and eruptions of aggression.

 

2. Perhaps all of us could face the trauma millions of Americans have endured over the last decade:  inflation, loneliness, the opioid epidemic, destructive hurricanes, floods and heat, gun violence, and the colossal impact of the Covid pandemic. Given that our culture sees vulnerability as a sign of weakness (or enduring woundedness) and has no practices to collectively grieve, how much of the anger and aggression that pervades our body politic is actually unprocessed sadness, deep disappointment, and genuine loss?

 

3. We liberals might reflect on how, in order to maintain our joy vibe of optimism (and celebrity), we dissociate the deep difficulties of life and loss that millions of people are feeling. We conservatives might reflect on how Trump’s nastiness and crudeness attracts us due to dissociated sadness and grief that sees vulnerability as weakness. Whether a joy-vibe masking genuine loss (and responsibility) or a vileness masking genuine sadness, the consequence is the incredible violence of everyday life right now. Violence co-created by the radically polarized way we frame issues. “Smiley Joy” on one side and “Snarling Hostility” on the other. Each a way to avoid grappling with the downsides of the exploitation of people and resources, radical inequality, unequal justice, and the commodification of every public and private good from prisons and parks to water and love — horrors that those of us in the top 10% on whichever side (and I include myself) have for the most part been protected from, if not benefited from.

 

4. We live in a culture where the meaning of being informed has been altered by species of misinformation that create the sense of knowing something, while actually leading one away from knowing. Perhaps both the winners and losers ought to ask how we have allowed (and anyone with an IRA or an ETF has actually benefited from) a few amoral victors in later-term capitalism, and their information platforms driven by business models dependent on pernicious algorithms, to so distort our views of our fellow citizens and neighbors. For example, liberals might ask whether by purposefully truncating Trump’s Charlottesville comments from “There were very fine people on both sides, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white supremacists because they should be condemned totally” to “There were very fine people on both sides,” we helped paint Trump and half of America as ranting antisemitic racists. And conservatives might ask whether demonizing illegal immigrants as dangerous criminals — and thereby stirring up fear, anger, and bigotry in millions of people, against millions of people — is a healthy way to get elected, let alone to make the case for serious immigration policy that we desperately need. Especially given data showing that illegal immigrants commit less crime than citizens, and that they are basically employed by the ruling class as a critical way to keep labor costs down and profits up.

 

5. Perhaps we liberals or Harris voters should use a period of silence to reflect on, given we are so educated and psychologically evolved, how did we fail so miserably to grasp what millions of Americans in every single demographic were saying: that something is off in our country? And we probably should ask why, if we are so profoundly inclusive and egalitarian, do the majority of Americans see us as so exclusive and elitist?

 

6. Perhaps, we conservatives or Trump voters need to reflect on how we want to use the mandate we now have to address the grievances and resentments of millions of Americans that we did indeed understand and even exploit: Do we want to act with vindictive triumphalism or with fierce grace? And we conservatives need to reflect on how the call to “Make America Great Again” now has millions of Americans with minority identities, including women, people of color, migrants, LGBTQ+, etc. and millions of people around this planet including Ukrainians, Taiwanese, Palestinians, etc. feeling palpably more vulnerable, more fearful, and in more danger today than last week.

 

7. In our silent time, all sides might remember that defeat and victory are always in a relentlessly contingent dance, with victory often leading to overreach and complacency, and with defeat often leading to wisdom and renewal.

 

8. Similarly, all sides might consider becoming ferociously curious about our own tribes’ limitations and about the truths — however partial – of those tribes we fear, or even loathe. (I will suggest some of these partial truths in the weeks ahead.) In this period of silence we – whichever of the many “Wes” to which we belong — should reflect on what price we, and not some other group, are willing to incur; what discomfort we are willing to bear; what illusions we need to give up; what sacrifices we are willing to make, in order to better America for all. As long as the policies we advocate always require someone else to sacrifice while we gain, we aren’t serious about moving forward together, turning the page, or making America great.

 

9. For us intellectuals, thought leaders, knowledge workers, creatives, commentariat: Perhaps we should consider how the more we depend on abstract conceptual lenses and ideological frameworks to understand each other, and the more we relate to each other as representatives of political parties, ethnic or racial groups, religious or national tribes, or generalized kinds of people, the more we actually miss the animating fears and hopes, pain and joy, despair and loves of the daily human affairs of millions of our fellow citizens. And the more any of us feels our “we” possesses the whole truth, or a theory of everything, or final solutions to our complex problems, the more damage we do to each other.

 

10. I have a feeling it’s time to be more real and open with the human beings right around us — our fellow passengers in the subway, the stranger in line at the store, our neighbor down the block who had the “wrong” lawn sign, our colleague with whom we are competing as much as we are cooperating, the parent/grandparent in the playground who looks different than us and surely loves their child or grandchild as much as we do, the family member whose politics has damaged our relationship.

It’s time to realize that we all have demons and angels within, and that when we imagine we are angels and they are demons, we actually amplify all demons. A “we” needs to emerge that includes winners and losers of the November 5th election who stop polarizing, demonizing, and dividing between good and evil, oppressed and oppressor, victims and perpetrators. One that can honestly address the disruption, dislocation, and alienation of globalization, rapid technological change, and unprecedented cultural change.

11. For my tribe specifically, perhaps we ought to have a moratorium on blame. So much blame tossed around — Biden, Harris, the economy, racism, Liz Cheney, sexism, the war in Gaza and the Arab and Muslim vote, elitism, wokism, progressives, toxic masculinity, Clinton, Obama, Democratic consultants and advertisers who sucked up a billion dollars in less than four months, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and the bro culture podcast ecosystem, cable television, Latino men, non-voters, etc.

Here is the thing about blame. Even when justified, blame is always also a disavowal of complicity. It’s a diversion and deflection from uncomfortable truths too painful to face. In other words, blame – again, however justified — also reveals a buried awareness of culpability.

To put it crassly, because of my limited life experience as an Upper West Side, Jewish, 66-year-old liberal intellectual male, everyone I know who woke up in despair on November 6th, and chances are anyone reading this, is blessed in ways few in human history have ever been blessed. Not only will we probably not directly suffer because of the election results, but, at least after this first week or so of the market’s reaction to Trump’s victory, we have made plenty of money. It behooves us to explore the relationship between this fact and the erosion of liberalism and the explosion of precariousness, resentment, mistrust, and anger of millions of Americans. Our despair may be a deflected self-judgment. To put it more starkly: Is it possible that the punishment we seek to deflect is actually deserved?

12. Maybe it’s time to live the way we want our world to feel and be. At least as reasonable, as generous, as embracing of difference, as purposefully productive, and as kind as the world for which we argue and protest. Time for us to recognize that we live in a 330-million-piece jigsaw puzzle of psychological, cultural, moral, intellectual, and (a)spiritual ways that make up America. And it’s a neverending project to put the pieces together.

 

13. We need time out to think about how self-government means much more than having the right to vote for who governs us. Rather, to be a self-governed people means we have a responsibility to regulate our impulses, to direct our own attention, to manage our desires, to digest our emotions, to continuously work on knowing ourselves better, so that we are genuinely free to make our own choices and not be easily swayed by media, marketers, mobs, or messiahs.

 

14. Throughout the campaign, both parties had the nerve to evoke Abraham Lincoln. Whether we are blue, red, or purple, whether we are mourning or rejoicing, frightened or empowered, weeping or celebrating, it would be good to spend the next period of time internalizing Lincoln’s sacred liturgy from his Second Inaugural Address:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work; . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

I spent most of Wednesday, November 6th fielding calls from about two dozen people – all of them good, ethical, highly intelligent, and generous people — all feeling grief, loss, and despair. By about 2:45 in the afternoon, it was enough. My soul hurt. I decided to go see my grandchildren. Jemma is four (and three-quarters!) and Zeke is two. Too young to be stained by the poisoned forms of solidarity we have created, they simply ran into my arms exclaiming, “Saba! Saba!” All was well. After spending a few hours playing and laughing and loving, I got on the subway to return home. Looking around at the diverse faces – each person unique and all of us interconnected – I thought about how our country is indeed in for some very rocky times. But what is also true is that every one of us can mitigate, as best we can, the suffering of those most vulnerable, who, as always, will be most hurt in times like ours.

We can align our talents, our values, our passion, and all the integrity we can muster with what the world most needs: helping people flourish. And we can be as kind as possible in every interaction — with family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and yes strangers — because only a flood of kindness, decency, calm, graciousness, and generosity can quench the fires of fear and anger.

Let’s take care of each other and do good and together we will weather the storm. The Promised Land is never reached, but perpetually promised, and the only real question is with whom do we want to wander. For the first time in human history, we have no choice. However unnerving and challenging it may be, we are all on the ark together.