Dear Supporters and Detractors of Donald Trump: Stop Doing the Splits
Political and Social One-Sidedness is Unhealthy and Unnecessary
During the 2020 presidential campaign, I stopped doing the political splits. I stopped supporting only the blue political church and started to mix up my political allegiances. Why? Because, against my naive hopes and dreams at that time, Bernie Sanders was dumped (again) by a corrupt DNC and I needed to update my files. Although I am no expert in politics, I could see corruption written on the walls of the party that I had aligned with through my entire adult life.
For reasons I could not grasp, I could also see that Democrats were moving away from resisting war, developing excellent public health and public education for Americans, making things better for the working class, and protecting girls and women under Title IX -- an initiative I had worked on early in my own career as a feminist. Democrats were also supporting contentious identity politics and making assumptions about the absence of biological sex differences in humans that did not make sense scientifically from everything I knew about the distinctions between the social construction of gender and the biology of sex.
I became a political realist. I voted my conscience, based on my own research, on any candidate or issue that I understood or I skipped checking the box. In other words, I looked into the weeds, became independent (thinking for myself, not just following party lines), but not “an independent.” I don’t like identity categories because I believe they foster both exaggerated self-consciousness and falseness about our emotional complexity as human beings.
By nature, I am not a cheerleader. In watching a recent episode of Landman, a new series on Web TV about oil men, the “ex-wife” Angela (played comedically by Ali Larter) gave this advice to her teenage daughter on the show: “Don’t trust cheerleaders who do the splits.” That’s a perfect slogan for a political realist like me!
Among my family members and friends, some joined me on the road to political realism while others did not, but far-away friends like Diana Johnstone, Ken Wilber, Bayo Akomalafe, Charles Eisenstein, and Mike Berger were traveling with me and I truly enjoyed their company.
I found other fellow travelers like Bari Weiss, Andrew Yang, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Coleman Hughes, Ryan Grim, John McWhorter, and Robert Livingston while exploring the vast space of political complexity and thoughtful journalism.
Perhaps more significantly, I discovered the importance of speaking modestly, from my own experience and taking responsibility for saying only what I knew to be true or heard from trusted fellow travelers. I did my best to listen with true curiosity to those whose politics were different from my own, provided they also afforded me respect and did not seem to be pandering to media that were throwing gasoline on hostility and animosity in order to get clicks and likes. As a result of all this, I founded the non-profit Center for Real Dialogue in 2024, that has committed itself to education in skills and methods for responsible speaking and listening to end political and relational splitting.
In April 2024, I was in the audience in Vancouver to hear the brilliant 10-minute TED talk given by 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang. He described a clear and practical way to change primaries in the US to get out of a two-party system, a design flaw that has kept us stuck in political splits, not solving our problems despite the billions of dollars spent by politicians trying to sell us what they do. Right now it is easier for our congress members not to work across the aisle than to try to do so and be exposed on social media by the “other side.” As Yang points out, with only a 15% percent approval rating (on average), the US congress has had a 94% re-election rate -- higher than any winning streak in the most excellent sports teams. After his TED talk, I had a personal conversation with Yang about the corruption in the DNC and he was open and transparent. I encourage you to listen to his TED talk here because it further illustrates the problem of getting stuck in one-sidedness.
On this occasion of a new Trump administration sweeping into Washington, I recommend not doing the splits. Instead, let’s start some real dialogue to become responsible for working together on the following:
Ending the wave of chronic diseases in American children
Transforming our educational system so that teachers in public schools can teach our children, as unique individuals, about the subjects in which the teachers are experts without being dominated by one-sided political agendas
Solving our current “crisis of masculinity” that means our sons, grandsons, and brothers are made to feel self-conscious, less-than, or inadequate simply for being male and hence, not having opportunities they deserve
Changing our political primaries and districting so that we can develop several strong political parties
Clarifying and embracing our responsibilities for free speech and expression by acknowledging the worth and privilege of understanding many different points of view before deciding what’s true
In the end, here is what is truly harmful about splitting: human beings are imperfect and short-sighted and we cheat ourselves through one-sidedness. We will always have to wrestle through conflicting ideas and experiences, even as individuals, before we find see any lasting truth. We need both sides and different points of view, in order to succeed in anything we do. The idea that “one size fits all” (in public health) or that “love wins in this house” (as though that house is exclusive) or that other people are “the haters” will never support human development or survival. We are not gods. We have to learn from our failures and defeats in order to solve the problems that face us and the other side is a valuable source of getting to know our mistakes.
It takes a lot of dialogue – responsible speaking and mindful listening -- for any of us even to perceive how others see the world. One reason why we need to protect and teach free speech and diverse points of view is that we need to speak freely in order to THINK. The human mind – not the organ called “the brain” – is relational and requires on-going interaction with diverse insights in order to find what works. Just as we need several political parties in order to end splitting, we need to recognize that one-sided ideologies will never serve our welfare.