You've heard me say that we need to find the political equivalent of divorce if we are to reduce the animosity that threatens to destroy us as a nation. But the marital analogy limps badly. Although I don't think much of Damon Linker, he talks sense here:
Part of me gravitates to a fantasy of divorce. Maybe both sides would be happier if we just separated and went our separate ways, like unhappy spouses who call it quits after a few-too-many wounding arguments and rounds of couples therapy.
But of course that's delusional. A nation isn't like a marriage — certainly not companionate marriage based on individual choice. But it's not even a more traditional arranged marriage where there is a period of youthful independence before the union is announced and formalized. Unless you're an immigrant, your country is where you find ourselves at birth. It's a given — like a family in which you are born and raised before you even come to complete self-awareness. It shapes your outlook on the world in more ways than you can ever fully grasp.
Families can break up, tear themselves asunder, but it usually isn't pretty. Neither are divorces. But at least a divorce takes places within a legal and moral frame that persists outside the marriage. Certain rules abide and apply to both parties, guiding the division of marital assets and looking out for the welfare of any children, with an impartial judge overseeing and enforcing it all. There is no such external structure when an extended family breaks apart into feuding factions.
Linker ends on this encouraging note:
Do we hate each other? And if we do, what are our viable options as a polity? I don't know how to answer those questions.
Me neither. There are options, of course, but I don't see any as particularly viable. Perhaps a long hot civil war that spills an ocean of blood might bring leftists to their senses, but the prospect of a couple of decades of extreme civil disorder is not an appetizing one.