What comes next?

It's about a new national direction after the Pax Americana that beats the Global Right. It's universalism.

How is this election so close? If you even ask the question to our angry, dissatisfied nation, you’ll trigger emotional reactions about immigration, inflation, deficits, rural decline, DEI, or Afghanistan. But stop and pause. Those issues don’t, in any way, come close to January 6th, and Trump’s violation of America’s most sacred values. It’s even crazier if you look at the big picture, and see Biden’s transformative economic, foreign policy, and legislative wins. 

What’s causing the democracy-threatening shrug of the undecided voter? It all stems from one root cause: many Americans feel the country’s lost direction. Individual issues sting more because, underneath it all, it feels like there’s no plan.

Biden embodies our past glory, the Pax Americana which ruled the world from the fall of the Berlin Wall until 2016. But our culture has rapidly splintered since then. Our institutions are meant to represent our culture and stabilize our society. But they do neither. Trump, who more than any single person, splintered our culture and killed our institutions, offers a new direction. His direction is dark, false, and un-American. But, any direction feels better than social chaos, even to many who see through his lies. 

How can the 81-year-old Biden authentically offer an alternative to Trump that’s inspiring, truthful, and grounded in American principles?

Whether Biden stays in the race or finds a successor, he shouldn’t promise the full antidote to Trump’s dark vision. Instead, he should promise the time and path to figure out a direction that’s new and better than Trump. He should identify a barrier that has to be solved first: our social fragmentation. And he should guide the Democratic Party to again become the best version of itself: a bottoms-up universalizing force.

Our social fragmentation, driven by social media algorithms and the demagogues who exploit them, has empowered tribal chieftains in every group. Each crafts a mini-tribal reality tailored to tribal bias, and walls off other groups. Trump is the biggest group’s chieftain, but other chieftains lead smaller groups. They are obstacles to healing our nation, forming a universal national identity, and solving complex policy challenges.  

There are two ways we rebuild a cohesive national identity that meets America’s anxiety. Trump offers cruel right-wing nationalism where might is right, tribal lies are truth, and traditional culture dominates all. We know how a multipolar world led by regional strongmen ends: terrible warfare among great powers and terrible suffering for regular people. 

But we can also have a universal culture built on fairness and justice. That is America’s true promise. To build a universal culture that counters today’s Global Right, we need a new approach to the nation’s diversity. We have to update the 3 approaches of the past.  

Natural multiculturalism, championed by Clinton and Obama, puts an earnest faith in hands-off harmony. Let people in the room and they’ll find their way to a post-racial Hawaii. This works within socioeconomic groups but has blindspots across social classes and genders. It worked better when society had a baseline level of trust, but not now - when trust itself is gone.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) emerged to break intractable barriers. With a heavy hand and in record time, these programs diversified the boardroom, the water cooler, and the Netflix show. But, to some, this diversity hasn’t built authentic bonds. To others, it weighs representation over merit, sapping motivation in a brutally competitive economy. 

The liberation approach, around the longest, unites groups through a history of shared oppression. These struggles have won many hard-fought gains for women, workers, and minority groups. But liberation movements in the social media age have become dominated by the loudest members. The kind of person who wins has two flaws. 1) They marginalize decent people within or outside the group. 2) Their policy ideas are often trending hashtags, not the result of reasoned debate, evidence, and analysis. Society is balkanized into a coalition of tribes, each walled off with their preferred hashtag truth. 

Each approach has played an important role, but it’s now time for something new: The Great Adjustment.

We need a universal approach that adjusts our many fragments to fit together and find shared truth. The goal isn’t a melting pot of assimilation, which historically exploits and undervalues small groups. It’s also not a potluck dinner where groups briefly interact, but don’t form real bonds. The right approach builds an omelet. Each group retains parts of its identity, but in ways that connect into a single national culture.

The process of adjustment requires tough conversations that ask each group to evaluate itself and identify three parts. What parts of your identity can be shared with other groups? What parts are unique but don’t conflict with other groups? Finally, what parts are in conflict with a coherent, pluralistic America? We can have a great, inclusive society but we have to let go of those inconsistent parts. 

Some say this asks too much of people. But not if leaders explain the need. People want to connect with their neighbors and break the walls of suspicion. If they hold on to inconsistent beliefs, our pluralistic nation won’t work. We’ll go the way of Trump.

Some will say this process shouldn’t be political. Indeed, the universal path requires a bottoms-up process led by individuals, families, communities, coffee shops, and faiths. But presidential leadership and a better Democratic Party play an important role. 

When a constituency presents a problem, leaders must not pander for votes. This leads to a coalition with contradiction - some demand A and others demand not-A. We’re seeing that play out in Israel-Gaza. Instead, leaders must help groups adapt to the whole. They adjust and refine positions so they fit together in ways consistent with universal values. They can ask, “how do we solve this issue in ways that are fair to a higher principle, and not pandering to one group’s chieftain?” When they reward people with appointments, jobs, meetings, and medals, they can distinguish the people who did the hard work. We should not simply celebrate diversity, but a nation that finds coherence, direction, and higher purpose within diversity. The only nation to do so. E pluribus unum.

Some will say this message won’t resonate in an information landscape designed to tribalize. 

But this is wrong. People are not confused about their deepest pain. They know they are lonely and aimless. They understand Trump’s direction, but most don’t want it. If a leader offers a universal alternative to Trump’s dark vision, it will resonate in digital and real life. It will make sense to people who crave national meaning and belonging. They will hear the message, spread the ideas to their groups, and answer this exceptional nation’s call.

Some will say “this isn’t practical in 3 months” and they completely miss the point. People don’t want the answer in 90 days. They want to participate in the process that produces the answer. They want an American direction that defines the next age, after the Pax Americana. 

Biden can lay out this vision of an American omelet. He can identify the fragmentation that paralyzes progress and the chieftains who cause this fragmentation. He can identify the young leaders and process that ensures his succession, whether this election or next, is not cheap tribal warfare. He can inspire a bottoms-up process of adjustment that makes our noble American experiment work, and resist the shortcut to darkness.