By Michael F. Duggan
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine devised a topical-analytical term of art—a specialized usage of a common word and its variations—to describe the bases of divisions that now threaten the domestic tranquility of our nation. The term is incomprehension. His use of the word means an inability of ordinary Americans to understand each other or to communicate on the same wavelength or with similar perceptions and assumptions.
For instance, Democrats and progressives are unable to understand how anyone could fall for someone like Trump. They regard MAGA supporters to be deluded—either a manifestation of mass psychosis or else a cult phenomenon—and unable to see through the illusion. Trump supporters say that it is the liberals who are deluded, that they take him too literally out of hostility and cannot understand his greatness (as Salena Zito observed “The press takes [Trump] literally but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally).1 Non-supporters comprehend him differently from supporters and their comprehension is incomprehensible to the other side, so they must be bad. The MAGA and Woke communities represent different universes that are fundametnally at odds with each other, work on different sets of assumptions, and are therefore Irreconcilable.
Likewise, the populist right is dumbfounded by the progressive preoccupation with various social-sexual and gender issues. To those on the right, the liberal focus on transgender issues and activities like drag shows, for instance, is eccentric, outlandish, baffling, and offensive to traditional values. Other than what they regard to be a calculated attack on their moral beliefs, such causes are incomprehensible to them. These issues are as bewildering to the Right as QAnon conspiracy theories are to the Left. And from such a lack of mutual understanding and sympathy for the other side comes distrust, anger, and then hatred.
But the incomprehension of our people goes beyond the ideologies of the culture wars. It is also found in the interactions of daily life. When white, working class Americans come face to face with newly-arrived immigrants from Latin America, both sides will likely experience incomprehension. Although members of both groups may embrace variations of Christian faith and may occupy a similar economic space, there is a strong manifestation of cultural and linguistic incomprehension.
For progressives, or anyone with sympathy for others, it is a difficult thing to admit, but the larger and more diverse a nation becomes, the less governable it becomes. The smaller and more homogeneous a democracy is, the better its chances (think of a New England town hall meeting or a small country, like Denmark). This is because the citizens of a small, uniform community or nation can comprehend their fellow citizens and understand and identify with their interests.
By contrast, the larger and more diverse a nation becomes, the less democratic it becomes as individual rights give way to group rights, identification, interests, and social causes (name a nation as large or larger than the United States with a burgeoning, diverse population that is a showcase for liberal democracy). Social democracy in a nation as large and varied as the U.S. in 2023 is probably a nonstarter. As the late Tony Judt observed in 2010, “There may be something inherently selfish in the social service states of the mid-20th century: blessed for a few decades with the good fortune of ethnic homogeneity and a small, educated, population where almost everyone could recognize themselves in everyone else.”2 The New Deal worked in large part because Americans could see themselves in the faces of the dispossessed. They could comprehend their fellow citizens and their plight.
I realize that all of this suggests something ugly about people, a hardwired propensity for tribalism and racism. I don’t like this fact, and yet we must acknowledge it in order to address it. Rather than resorting to name-calling, it is better to try to understand what lies beneath bigoted attitudes and the foundations of incomprehension. As the sociobiologist, Edward O. Wilson notes,
“All things being equal (fortunately things are seldom equal, not exactly), people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs. An amplification of this evidently inborn predisposition leads with frightening ease to racism and religious bigotry. Then, also with frightening ease, good people do bad things. I know this truth from having grown up in the Deep South during the 1930s and 1940s.”3
Although Wilson’s observation flies in the face of the idea that differences sometimes attract and that diversifying the gene pool is a good thing that might be reflected in social behavior, he appears to be right that, on balance, people prefer to be with others that they can comprehend, and that race, language, and beliefs are bases for comprehension. Wilson’s observation also identifies the inborn propensity for the tribalism that underlies racism, and therefore embraces the idea that racism must be actively opposed. There is no such thing as the benign neglect of bigotry, and the hope that if we don’t teach children to be bigots they won’t become bigots is a dangerous one. We must teach and encourage the comprehension of others if we are to bridge the dangerous divides in our country.
I believe it is the conservative political thinker, Peter Viereck (who now reads like a cautious progressive) who observes that when fundamental change comes too quickly, the result is instability and eventually violence. I would offer that the cause of that instability and violence is a situation in which comprehension does not keep pace with change. Therefore we must educate all sides about the humanity and rationale of those they oppose, those who they do not comprehend. We cannot change the nation in fundamental ways and hope that attitudes will just catch up with new social realities. We must make sure that social change and education about such things are on the same timetable and that the change is wanted and considered to be desirable by a sizable majority. Of course there is no guarantee, or even likelihood that a greater comprehension of both sides by both sides will be welcomed by either side. My sense is that the divides are already too deep to be bridged.
Notes
1). Selena Zito, “Taking Trump Seriously, not Literally, The Atlantic, Sept. 23, 2016.
2). Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land, 2010. 70.
3) Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, 31.