Ending the Culture Wars: How I look at Biden vs Trump
Tags: Trump, Politics, Joe Biden, Trumpism

Ending the Culture Wars: How I look at Biden vs Trump TaraElla Follow Aug 14 · 5 min read

Today, I want to outline in detail my views on the Biden vs Trump race, and also how one can have a strong preference for one candidate without contributing to further polarization. I will be looking at all this from the lens of ending the culture wars.

The culture wars are poison. The cultural and political polarization means that people sometimes don’t even share a view of reality anymore. Everything has been turned into a proxy marker of identity, from how one sets up their twitter profile, to which side one reflexively takes in every cultural conflict, even to what branded products one would buy in some cases. The more serious consequences of this are that people just can’t come together and have a rational conversation anymore, people just can’t put their differences aside and work together anymore. And the trials of this year has taught us just how dangerous this can be. Moreover, free speech is the often the first casualty of any culture war, and recent events have highlighted how much the situation for free speech has further deteriorated compared to four years ago, when it was already pretty bad. Furthermore, the polarization has meant that elite-agenda driven politics on both sides are heard the loudest, and broad-tent movements that genuinely represent everyday people’s wishes are not adequately heard. As I said before, I think this is why the campaigns of Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard failed this year. The increase in polarization that has occurred during this year alone probably also explains why Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian candidate this year, is getting much less attention than Gary Johnson did in 2016. I’m not saying you have to support libertarian, but it’s still good to hear from different voices no matter who you support, so third parties sliding backwards in media representation isn’t good. Anyway, the point is, if we want things to change for the better, we need to find a way out of this cultural polarization.

So if one’s aim is to put an end to the culture wars, then how would one look at the Biden vs Trump race? After thinking extensively about this question, my conclusion is clear: I strongly prefer Biden winning over Trump, but at the same time, it would be important to discourage this whole thing turning into yet another shouting match. While I prefer Biden over Trump, I also don’t think we should burn bridges with Trump supporters, like many liberals, progressives and Never-Trump conservatives alike did in 2016–17. And both of these positions are strongly informed by my sincere wish to put an end to the cultural wars. I will now explain both of these positions in detail.

The reason why I prefer Biden over Trump is because, whether you like his policies or not, I believe his leadership style would at least allow a chance for rational discussion and bridge-building to return, so we can have productive conversations about things like the automation revolution, or how we can end the endless wars. Furthermore, I believe we are at a critical moment in the history of Western civilization. Right now, the classical liberal values that have served us so well are now at stake, because of these intense cultural wars, and there are actors with questionable agendas on both sides seeking to exploit these cultural wars to tear down the post-WWII democratic consensus. Biden’s instincts as a bipartisan consensus builder could be more important than anything on his platform at this critical moment. My first problem with Trump is that he has a tendency to make inflammatory comments, and when you’re doing that as the President of the United States, it has a predictable polarizing effect. My second problem with Trump is that, in testing times he reflexively turns to cultural issues to energize his base, and we’ve seen it a lot during this year, because he is behind in an election year. The problem with this base strategy is that it inevitably leads to more polarization. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons for one to prefer Biden over Trump, but I think this is already a strong enough case on its own.

With all that said, I think we should also take steps to prevent burning bridges with Trump supporters. There are many reasons why one may choose to support Trump, even if I personally disagree with that choice. Unfortunately, what they say about ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ is not without merit, if you look at it objectively. Anti-Trump people calling all Trump supporters racist, for example, played a big part in the increasing polarization during 2016–17, and that mistake should never be repeated. After all, even if Trump gets re-elected, people will still need to live with each other for the next four years. Even if Trump is re-elected, I think it would be extra sad if the MAGA vs anti-MAGA wars continued to play out for four more years. As much as we find Trump’s behavior distasteful, we need to remember that Trump supporters don’t necessarily share all of Trump’s attitudes and may not support all of his outrageous behavior. We should instead try to see where Trump supporters are coming from, what they want out of supporting Trump, and I think we’ll learn a lot about what many people have been missing all these years. I’ve certainly learned a lot from listening to Trump supporters in the past few years. And no, that doesn’t mean I’ve become more like a Trump supporter. It just means that I’ve addressed some of my previous blind spots. Much has been said by anti-Trump people about what policies are needed to prevent another Trump rising in the future. But the truth is, these people are all just trying to push their own agendas. The real reason why Trump won was because mainstream politicians had quite a few blind spots about what things people want fixed, and Trump provided a convincing solution. To move forward, I think we should all face up to that.