{"id":12772,"date":"2022-07-05T19:52:39","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T23:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=12772"},"modified":"2022-07-05T19:52:42","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T23:52:42","slug":"the-exhausted-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=12772","title":{"rendered":"the exhausted American"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Intramuralist wrote about respected economist David French\u2019s eye-opening book, \u201cDivided We Fall,\u201d addressing potential secession… two years ago. Note what the author so poignantly shares now, as written recently in The Dispatch:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026 I\u2019m growing increasingly wary of the binary analysis of American life. The more I travel this country post-pandemic, the more I encounter the third faction\u2014the \u2018exhausted majority\u2019 first identified by More in Common\u2019s <\/em>\u2019Hidden Tribes\u2019 survey all the way back in 2018<\/a>. Under this analysis, America isn\u2019t just red and blue. It\u2019s red and blue and<\/em> just plain tired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who are these tired Americans? The polling answer<\/a> from the survey is the two-thirds of our neighbors and citizens (from across the political spectrum) who are fed up<\/em> with polarization, forgotten<\/em> in public discourse, flexible<\/em> in their views, and still believe we can find common ground<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhausted American is in my email inbox, writing personal, anguished letters about lost relationships. The radicalized American is in my Twitter<\/em> feed, furious at any deviation from the party line. The radicalized American is capturing institutions, making life miserable for dissenters left or right. The exhausted American doesn\u2019t know where to go. Who speaks for them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhausted American does not make a religion out of politics, and is thus at a disadvantage when confronting the ferocity and zeal of the true political believer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhausted American is hungry for simple decency, and will seek out friendships on the left and the right, so long as respect trumps differences. Even the most extreme disagreements are manageable so long as a friend is willing to listen and learn, and you\u2019re willing to listen and learn in return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhausted majority is also the hope for America. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make no mistake, the answer is not found in the polarized wings. Each side has too much animosity to reach any kind of accommodation and too little power to achieve any kind of permanent triumph. In my book, I posited that federalism could be an answer to our political divide, but partisan animosity has grown so great that state governments are wielding local power in the service of national fights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

State legislation has become both performative and punitive, with a focus on rewarding friends and punishing enemies. California, for example, currently bans<\/a> state-funded and state-sponsored travel to 20 American states, a form of economic sanction designed to punish states that California deems insufficiently protective of LGBT rights. Florida has enacted a broad range of laws<\/a> that purport to crack down on \u2018wokeness\u2019 and punish expression with which the state disagrees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what happens when the exhausted majority gets just a little bit energetic? It can check the excesses of left and right. In San Francisco an exhausted progressive<\/em> majority<\/a> recalled radical school board members and a radical district attorney. In the Southern Baptist Convention, an exhausted conservative<\/em> majority<\/a> has now twice turned back a politically radicalized and vocal fundamentalist wing that would transform the SBC into a MAGA denomination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know and have met people who both organized and voted for the San Francisco recall. I know and have met people who resisted the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. And the two groups share something important in common. While they\u2019re both political in the sense that they have political values, politics is ultimately less important to their day-to-day lives than it is to their most motivated opponents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Invariably this means that the exhausted majority\u2019s political engagement is more occasional or episodic than it is constant or relentless. The polarized wings never rest. The exhausted majority stirs itself when the situation is dire, exerts its will, and then returns to its true passions\u2014whether that\u2019s family, work, or faith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a time when I lived my life on the polarized wings. I spent more time worried about \u2018the left\u2019 than I spent thinking through what part my partisanship played in fraying the American social fabric. I saw the triumph of my political foes as a greater threat to the nation than the partisan conflict itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I now hold a different view, one that\u2019s closer to the view of America\u2019s wisest founders at their most prescient moments. George Washington, in his farewell address<\/a>, warned his countrymen against the dangers of factionalism and regionalism. James Madison, in Federalist 10<\/em><\/a>, warned against the \u2018violence of faction.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abraham Lincoln, the indispensable architect of America\u2019s second founding, told the Young Men\u2019s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois<\/a>, \u2018At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m concerned about our national union. I\u2019m more concerned than I was when I wrote my book warning about the possibility of secession. But I also know that the solution to our challenge is hiding in plain sight. It\u2019s the great bulk of the American people\u2014the fed up, forgotten, flexible Americans who span the ideological spectrum yet don\u2019t completely identify as red or blue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This July Fourth, I\u2019m both proud to be an American and convinced that our best days can still lie ahead of us. But not if we\u2019re too tired to engage. The exhausted majority has to get energetic, even if only for a time, to rescue America from the friends, families, and neighbors who are tearing it apart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Respectfully\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Intramuralist wrote about respected economist David French\u2019s eye-opening book, \u201cDivided We Fall,\u201d addressing potential secession… two years ago. Note what the author so poignantly shares now, as written recently in The Dispatch: \u201c\u2026 I\u2019m growing increasingly wary of the binary analysis of American life. The more I travel this country post-pandemic, the more I … <\/p>\n

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