America on the Brink

As a final point, there is the problem of what passes as leadership today in America. We have too many political and community leaders who cannot see “the forest for the trees,” meaning they are so preoccupied with the individual parts - singular social issue, social group, or partisan loyalty - that they neglect the whole - the health and well-being of the nation. We have powerful leaders whose thinking and actions hurt the country but benefit their group, and they believe this is acceptable. That is only part of the problems we face. Our preoccupation on only parts and blindness of the whole is why we cannot see the root of the growth of social dysfunction that is stifling our nation. I want to draw our attention to what I believe to be the core because I suspect this broader crisis is a second and equally important reason Biden invoked the language of America in a fight for its soul. The Heart of Our National Crisis While attention needs to be given to the political system, weakening and ineffective infrastructure, and poverty, they do not get at the heart of our crisis. Our first core problem is that we have placed hatred at the center of society. Hate is the undercurrent and common thread animating the American crisis. It guides how we think about and interact with others (remember the Ben Sasse book, Them ). For example, there is a form of hate that I call “othering” that manifests itself in both the resurgence of the old white-black racism and neo-racism directed against other people of color and immigrant communities. Othering categorizes non-white people to justify indifference, mistreatment, and violence. Othering extends beyond racism and xenophobia. Its social currency also allows us to use partisan and class labels as excuses to mask indifference, exclusion, and discrimination. In other words, we all use othering to justify ill treatment of each other in both our personal relationships and policies we support. Yoni Appelbaum’s article “How America Ends” in The Atlantic gave a compelling example of what I’d call “partisan othering.” “Recent research by political scientists at Vanderbilt University and other institutions has found both Republicans and Democrats are distressingly willing to dehumanize members of the opposite party. “Partisans are willing to explicitly state that members of the opposing party are like animals that they lack essential human traits,” the researchers found…This is a dangerous line to cross. As the researchers write,” Dehumanization may loosen the moral restraints that would normally prevent us from harming another human being” (December 2019, 46). These researchers are correct. The way we think and talk about people in the opposite party is dangerous. Today, hate has created a crisis in public morality, indicative of a nation losing its soul. We cannot fix our crumbling infrastructure, bridge the partisan divide, correct systemic racism, and address poverty until we come to grips with hate. Why do I believe that we have centralized hate in society? First, as a general principle, people are not going to admit they hate other people or are thinking and acting in hateful ways. This does not, however, mean such a claim is true. Actions always speak louder than words. A person or group’s actions

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