Make America Join Again
The shooting of former President Trump last week brought us a nanosecond of the rarest thing in American life – national unity. Immediately following the incident, President Biden issued a statement of condemnation of the attack and of political violence in general, and other Democrats joined Republicans in sympathy.
But then, within an hour, society splintered again. Democrats called for banning AR-15 rifles like those used in this and other assassination and shooting attempts; Republicans called for greater access to guns – if the Secret Service couldn’t take out the shooter fast enough, armed civilians would have. Conspiracy theories sprouted like kudzu: the Secret Service let it happen; it never would have happened if some of the detail weren’t women; the whole thing was staged and the blood came from a theatrical blood pack; the hit was ordered by Putin, or China, or Biden, or Antifa; etc. There is no evidence of any of these things. (There is evidence of a close link between loneliness and mass shootings – see this post from last year).
It was another reminder of our current society’s inability to agree on anything. We have no shared experiences, beliefs or even common understandings of fact.
Following my recent post on my father and the critical role World War II had in shaping his approach to life, a friend sent over a copy of a Wall Street Journal article illustrating the role World War II experience played in creating a Congress that actually passed legislation in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
At the high point, 327 of 435 US House members were veterans. Eighty-one of 100 Senators had served; most in World War II. According to Gerald Seib, a visiting fellow at the Robert J. Dole institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, that shared experience in war informed the way members of Congress treated each other in a few important ways.
· They had a shared touchstone; an experience they had shared and a cause they had agreed on;
· They had seen tough, frightening times; taking a tricky vote in Congress wasn’t as intimidating as facing enemy gunfire.
· They had served with a wide range of people from different races, classes and geographies.
· They shared a belief that the US had a critical role to play in international affairs.
That common experience enabled even the most bitter political opponents to come together to get things done for the country. Seib recalls that Sen. George McGovern (a Democrat) believed Sen. Bob Dole (a Republican) had sabotaged McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, but the two men had both served admirably in Italy during World War II. Over time, that bond brought them together and enabled them to work as partners to help shape, among other things, national agricultural policy and the food stamp program.
Sen. Bob Dole (left) and Sen. George McGovern disagreed on almost everything politically, but because of a shared experience, they found a few things they could work together on.
These days, there is no common experience for members of Congress. Just 17% of Senate members and 18% of House members are veterans and even the veterans have had different experiences: some are from peacetime; others from a variety of conflicts; others haven’t served overseas.
It’s not only Congress, of course; we as Americans have lost almost all shared touchstones. We have 587 different cable channels; our newsfeeds are personalized to ensure we only see news and points of view that tally with our worldview; we can set up our music to ensure we only hear songs we already know. We live in mostly segregated communities and go to mostly segregated places of worship (but not in the same numbers as we used to; 28% of Americans now classify themselves as “nones,” meaning they’re not doing any kind of collective worship). Just 0.4% of us are active-duty military; 7.4% have ever served (I haven’t). Public schools have been getting more segregated (racially and economically) for nearly three decades.
There are experiences Americans all remember as a nation – the shock of 9/11; the scars of the Great Recession; the fear of the pandemic – but each of those was different from World War II. The military response to 9/11 was borne by only a small minority; we experienced the financial crisis as individual family units; and we socially isolated during the pandemic.
Political scientist Robert Putnam’s new book, Upswing, updates his classic 2000 book, Bowling Alone, and tries to make the point that we can find our way back to shared collective experiences again. He notes that American society in 1880 was very similar to today in a few ways – high political polarization, high income inequality and a culture of not caring for others. All those trends improved through the mid-1960’s, then began the steady deterioration that brings us to the present.
Putnam summarizes the trendline of the past 125 years “I-We-I.” So how do we get back to “we”?
Putnam (center) has been arguing for 25 years that we learn something by joining clubs with people from different backgrounds. These days we are doing too much “Bowling Alone.” (photo Willis Misch)
Putnam’s observation: what led us out of our self-centered funk, beginning about 1900, was an epidemic of joining. We joined the Boy Scouts or 4-H as kids, book clubs and civic clubs and movements as adults. And being part of those groups helped us learn how to listen to each other, how to support each other, how to care about other people and other things bigger than ourselves. Putnam’s prescription for today: join something (Remember this post on the high levels of trust in Denmark? The Danes are prolific joiners. Remember the series on loneliness? Why are we so lonely? We aren’t joining.).
There is value in being part of organizations that bring us into contact with people exactly like us: Putnam describes this as building bonding social capital. You can find people to bond with in the KKK or political groups, of course, but you can also find them in church service groups or card games or supper clubs.
But Putnam notes that there is special value these days in joining organizations where some of the people look different or earn different than we do. That might be through volunteering at PTA’s or Boy’s or Girl’s Clubs or in soup kitchens. In those settings you might come into contact with some folks who the world differently; spending time in those settings creates bridging social capital.
“I’m not saying ‘bridging good, bonding bad,’” notes Putnam, “Because if you get sick, the people who bring you chicken soup are likely to reflect your bonding social capital. But I am saying that in a diverse society like ours, we need a lot of bridging social capital.”
We get that capital by finding things we care about and joining with others to make them better.
The original “join or die” cartoon called Americans to unity in 1754. It’s not bad advice today either.
A documentary released about Putnam’s efforts on July 19 is called “Join or Die.” It paints the stakes of doing nothing in dire terms: it is “about why you should join a club…and why the fate of America depends on it.”).
We may not be able to make all of America join together again, but each of us can choose to leave our lives as loners and become joiners again. That’s not a bad place to start.
Notes:
Dueling conspiracy theories: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/screen-movies-conflicting-conspiracy-theories-emerge-trump-shooting-112054034
Congress when it had WWII veterans: https://www.wsj.com/politics/congress-got-more-done-when-the-greatest-generation-ran-it-0f533555
Americans identifying as religious “nones”: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/01/24/religious-nones-in-america-who-they-are-and-what-they-believe/
Rates of military service: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-percentage-of-americans-have-served-in-the-military/
Public school resegregation: https://www.vox.com/24156492/school-segregation-increasing-brown-board-of-education
Robert Putnam on joining: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/magazine/robert-putnam-interview.html
Link to “Join or Die” documentary: https://www.joinordiefilm.com