“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”
– Robert Benchley
This election process is driving me crazy. I wish we could just pick someone already, and get the fuck on with it. I mean, yes, I do hope a particular someone gets picked, but the longer that keeps not happening, the more disturbing this whole having to root for “my” side, and having to hate the other side, and having to bear witness to an ever increasing enmity widening the divide between the two sides, thing is becoming. Is anyone else feeling worn out, here? And it’s no longer relegated just to the 24-hour news cycle anymore. It’s in, like, everything. Video games, porn, pumpkins! Tried choosing a cup at 7-11 lately?
It’s like Bloods vs. Crips gone wild out there!
Binary battle lines are permeating the atmosphere, and they’ve been seeping into everything I seem to be writing recently, too. From the “sluts” vs. “virgins” pop-culture war, to the schism in conservative vs. liberal moral psychology, to PCs vs. Macs even. That’s all within the past month. It feels like everything is being forced to become a dichotomy. Which is a really dangerous kind of trap to get stuck in, and it’s prompted me to take a step back, and examine this phenomenon itself, rather than end up writing yet another post that would inadvertently fall into the same pattern. What I’ve realized is–surprise surprise!–I have two very powerfully conflicting reactions to this polarization that will be holding our reality hostage officially for 3 more weeks, but whose legacy will linger much, much longer.
Wait, before I get in to that, I just want to say that I realize that it’s not like this election invented the social/cultural/psychological divide between liberals and conservatives that politics has been exploiting since who knows when, but I really do think this particular election season has galvanized it to a degree that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen in the United States in my lifetime. A few weeks ago on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart suggested to guest, Bill Clinton, that “This election has apparently taken us all the way back to 1968 and the Nixonian and McGovern culture divide.” So it’s clearly not new, what’s going on today, but its degree of vehemence is not particularly familiar to anyone under 40, either.
Watching the preceding two elections go down, it had become increasingly clear that the left simply wasn’t getting it. It was like the nature of the electoral playing field had changed in some very crucial way, and the Democrats hadn’t gotten the memo. Which is why it feels like Barack Obama has offered a total departure from the kind of democratic nominees we’d gotten used to. People aren’t for Obama just because he’s the non-republican option. They are actually for what HE represents (which is, amazingly, a myriad of things to a broad spectrum of people, which he has, nonetheless, managed to bring together into a miraculously unified concept, and that unto itself is yet another aspect to his appeal), and they are for him in a fervent, decisive way that for the past 8 years has seemed to be the sole province of Republican candidates. So yeah, on the one hand, I can definitely say it’s been pretty gratifying to all of us who’d gotten tired of losing during that time, to watch the Democrats pull their shit together, and run a seriously strategized, legitimately competitive campaign. Booya. Bring it on. Go, team, go!
But here is what I personally find incredibly dismaying–even more than the right’s recent effort to cast Obama as a Muslim terrorist (I’m kind of surprised it took them this long), even more than the prospect of Sarah Palin possibly getting to make decisions about…. anything whatsoever (well, ok, dismaying on par with that)–is it’s precisely because Obama has been so successful at mobilizing the left, and the right has been forced to stake out even more desperately polarizing territory in response, that we’ve now gotten to a point where the cost of an election involves tearing the country limb from limb, first.
I said that this kind of social division that makes the air itself feel dense with tension is like nothing I’ve ever experienced in the U.S., but I have felt it somewhere else before: Jerusalem. There is a word in Hebrew that’s used for how Jerusalem feels–“Lachatz.” It literally translates to “pressure.” And in that city, that’s had contention in the air for millennia, that is, indeed, the right word. Like something intensely volatile, tenuously bottled up. In Jerusalem the binary conflict is ingrained, literally, into the walls, and it demands a constant vigilance of one’s affiliation. There are certain sections of the city where you are not allowed to go if you are Jewish, and others you cannot go to if you are Arab. Making sure you’re staying on your team’s side is not just a matter of politics, it’s how everyday life plays out. That’s what this election season, which has turned even regular, every-day actions into declarations of allegiance, is reminding me of. There’s this incessant perpetuation from all directions, whether it’s the media, or our friends, or slushie cups, of an us-vs.-them mentality, and I feel like it’s affecting how we think about everything right now, political or not.
Obviously, this is more or less inevitable when you’ve got a two-party election, and while it’s not like there’s anything that can be done about that situation now, I think it’s important to be aware, while we’re cheering our team on, of the underlying hazard in enjoying the polarization too much. Our human proclivity for this kind of binary divide is one of the most dangerous social situations that we can–and perpetually do–get ourselves into, and the massive eagerness with which both sides are relishing this particular battle is a little bit freaking me out.
Maybe it’s making me lose my sense of humor, too, cuz I totally can’t seem to find stuff like “McCain Be Old” to be funny… Or useful, for that matter. On that same episode of the Daily Show, Clinton said, “I’m glad [Obama]’s got people that love him that much. But those are not the people that hold this election.The people that hold this election are the people that think that he is on their side, and he loves them.” In other words, is it really necessary to incite alienation of people who could hold the swing vote, like, oh… you know… old people? Why not take a cue from Sarah Silverman instead, and shlep over to see your grandparents down in make-or-break-an-election state Florida? As Silverman says, “There’s nobody more important or influential over their grandparents than their grand-kids. You. If they vote for Barack Obama, they’re gonna get another visit this year. If not….”
As a marketer, I think one of the most crucial things to understand about people is just how diverse and nuanced the spectrum of identity and culture and personality is. In this long-tailed, custom-tailored, niched-up world we’re living in now, understanding the importance of approaching different groups on their own terms is the difference between success and irrelevance. Less than a month out from what I fully admit is the most important presidential race of my lifetime, may not be the time to start preaching plurality or diversity, or anything that could be undermining to in-group solidarity, but I think even through this process we do need to remember that with people things are not just black and white, or blue and red, or binary at all. One of the things that makes Barack Obama so appealing for me is that, as he himself acknowledges, as the product a Kenyan father, and an American mom, who was born in Hawaii, grew up in Indonesia, and became a Senator in Chicago, his mixed heritage has given him an understanding of America that is informed by a global, and uniquely modern perspective. That’s the kind of perspective that makes sense for the president of the United States when I think about the 21st century future not just of America, but the world.
Now, if we could just get through this election already…..