Silke Jasso
Speaking at a recent townhall event in his home district, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) earned his biggest applause of the night when he implored his constituents to avoid the callous partisanship that seems to increasingly plague our political conversations.
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“It matters that we are consistent as a people, that we are not thinking just in terms of teams all the time,” he said. “That it’s Team Republican versus Team Democrat. I think that is very dangerous for our country.”
Amash is right, and his reminder is especially timely on the occasion of Donald Trump’s inauguration day. New Gallup poll results find most Americans believe the inauguration festivities are more for Trump’s supporters than the United States as a whole — in other words, that the day is just a celebration of one partisan team.
That’s not especially surprising for anyone who has observed the last year and a half of gross political rancor. Still, it is worth recognizing and actively resisting such partisanship as it threatens to strike in our lives for at least two important reasons.
First, as I wrote in my second column ever here at Rare, Republicans and Democrats are much more similar than we might be tempted to imagine. I don’t say that in a kumbaya-let’s-all-be-friends sort of way, but rather as a statement of simple political fact.
Yes, there are real differences between the two parties. Yes, our new president has a unique talent for revealing and provoking ugly partisanship on the Democratic and Republican teams alike. And yes, there are specifics of Trump’s personal character and policy agenda that make his win uniquely troubling.
But for better or usually worse, these teams have a lot in common in their basic conceptions of the appropriate size, scope, and goals of government.
And second, as Rare’s Jack Hunter has ably argued, if we lose friends over politics, if we get trapped in that “Team Democrat” and “Team Republican” mindset, we’re kinda missing the whole point:
Getting angry with people you care about over politics — or worse, not speaking to them and ending important relationships — is exactly backward in terms of what our priorities should be.
Why do we care about politics to begin with? Presumably because we have strong opinions on what type of policies or governance would be best for our friends, family and neighbors — you know, the people we care about most. Liberals and progressives have long believed that a robust state can provide the best solutions, and conservatives and libertarians have always favored a smaller and limited government, where private and voluntary actions create the healthiest social environment.
We disagree. But the larger point is, we all presumably want a system that will work best for all of us.
RELATED: Why celebrities skipping Donald Trump’s inauguration is actually a good thing
Again, I say this not as a vapid attempt to gloss over real differences or dismiss real worries about the incoming president. I have at least one friend who is traveling to Washington to protest Trump; and I have friends and family who are thrilled to see him take office. It’s not hard to see the motivations of both sides.
But wherever each of us lands on that spectrum, it should go without saying that giving in to impulses of base partisanship and unfair critique of those who think differently won’t bring us any closer to a system that works well for everyone. Not on inauguration day, and not for the next four years.
