As this administration comes to a close, I finally find something many of my friends on the right and on the left agree on. Neither side is interested in healing or reconciliation.
To my friends on the left, the crimes of the outgoing administration are too great to be forgiven. The delusions of the HIS supporters are too great to be validated. Unfortunately, I never got an answer to the question: can you invalidate over 70 million people? Most of these conversations took place before the January 6 insurrection. Now we have a second impeachment. Once the protection of “sitting president” is removed, we will probably see a flurry of new indictments.
Among my friends on the right, some are still firmly convinced the election was stolen. Beyond this, most point out how unfairly THEIR president was treated by the mainstream media and the night time comedians. Why should they give Biden a break? To them, calls for healing are disingenuous and too late.
Can there be a better demonstration of how dichotomous thinking usurps problem solving than this situation? As the polarization grow, has there ever been a greater need to put aside dichotomous issues for the good of the nation?
There is not much I can say to those on the right. If dichotomous thinking spreads like a virus, they openly support Typhoid Mary. No single person has done more to spread small-mindedness over the last four years then the outgoing president. Unfortunately dichotomous thinking not only spreads like a virus, it also tends to echo back and forth between groups. Dichotomous noise is self-amplifying. While it may be legitimate for the left to claim that the problem started with the 2016 election, the left did little to dissipate the noise. It remains an open question, if the left had treated him like a legitimate president from the beginning, would he have begun to “act presidential?” Perhaps not, but we will never know for sure.
What disappoints me, is my failure to convince my friends on the left that we need to be the ones to take the first step. By clinging to the need for accountability and retribution, the left feeds into the dichotomous mindset. This serves to perpetuate his legacy rather than bring it to a close.
Here is my suggestion. For the last 4 years it has been my hope that HIS supporters would realize the mistake they made in 2016. I was pretty shocked to see this was not the case after January 6th. Here is how, dichotomous thinking gets in the way. The word “mistake” carries with it the “We were right, you were wrong” baggage. In a recent interview (with Farreed Zakaria, CNN, 1/17/21) Jeh Johnson suggested characterizing the 2016 election as a “failed experiment.” I find this a much less dichotomous description.
Paraphrasing Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by [incompetence].” Was HE genuinely trying to start a violent insurrection, or was he simply deluded into thinking there was a legitimate pathway to 4 more years? Was it his belief that if tens of thousands of supporters peacefully raised their voices, they would be heard? Frankly I am as skeptical as I am sure my friends on the left are, but I am left asking myself “What is best for our nation?” Can we just ignore the outlook of tens of millions of our fellow citizens?
The argument in favor of accountability is that it will deter future presidents from doing the same. Not holding the guilty accountable will increase the probability of recurrence. I would like to propose that, if the root of the problem is dichotomous thinking, then putting accountability above healing will do more to increase the probability of recurrence. Support for HIM or others like him will only grow as the Us/Them polarization increases. The noise will continue to increase.
Four years ago today, I raised the question of the value of opposing or not opposing the incoming president (http://www.dichotomousthinking.com/2017/01/19/oppose-oppose-question/#comments ). It looks like I was correct that in the eyes of his supporters any failures attributed to him can be blamed on the left and the media. His supporters were never given the room to truly examine their choice. The US-vs-Them divide has only increased over the past four years. I end this post with the same thought with which I ended the 1/19/17 post:
It’s not HIM we need to defeat, it is the mindset.