Can COVID-19 Help Us Overcome Our Polarization?

It's upending everything else, after all.

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Without question, the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting our family and social lives, our markets, our health care systems, and the very way societies function. Regrettably, the death toll will climb and the costs of the economic fallout of this coronavirus will be severe and truly life-changing for almost everyone around the globe. 

It’s so severe that the pandemic could be the exogenous shock to our socio-political system that we need to realign our nation’s parties and priorities and break the polarization and anger that pervades so deeply into our political lives. It’s unseemly to describe that as a silver lining, but it would be a welcome result of an event that has upended our lives so much and in so many negative ways already.

As a professor who is racing to retool my spring course on the upcoming 2020 election so that my students and I can work remotely, I realized that I basically ended my seminar almost every week with the same statement when students were frustrated by the seeming political stalemate in the country: To move on from our current state of never-ending anger and chaos, we need some major global event to spur a critical realignment of our political system. The COVID-19 pandemic could do just that.

Let me explain.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Man-Eating Cow

    This article has been up long enough for us to have observed what's going on, and reach conclusions. I'd say it's going the other way. Under the pressure of this epidemic, the fault lines are actually opening.

    I hope I'm mistaken, and am putting too much weight on the insanity that is the modern Internet site comment thread.

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      C C Writer

      Maybe, maybe not. I see signs (in credible news media) that out there in real reality, private sector leaders and regular people are thinking sympathetically of others, how this will affect their fellow humans (and animals) and acting on their thoughts. It tends to crowd out the insane stuff, make it less interesting. Normalcy is not taken for granted any more. Maybe they will get a new appreciation for real sports vs. extreme "politics" as sport, from the absence of the real ones. IMHO if people get more anchored to real reality through this experience, they may emerge changed for the better.

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    d.a. douglas

    I believe in the short term you may see less partisanship/polarization, as the virus grows and more American lives are impacted.

    But just like after 9/11, once the main threat subsides and life begins to return to normal, then the knives will come back out on both sides (it is an election year after all).

    The big question will be, when does life get back to normal?

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      cheerio

      I don't think we will return to "normal." It will be a new normal. Also, I think the American people will take lessons from this time in regard to how they view DC, our Federal Government. I suspect a great majority will be united in disdain and mistrust and look to their local regional/state leaders. So hopefully, those leaders will step up. Those that don't will find themselves losing elections. Eventually competence, stewardship and good leadership will percolate upwards. From the articles I have read, I think we will be in for a rough time for the next couple months and then little by little our freedoms will be restored but the devil will be in the details.

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    td12212

    I was talking to a republican friend of mine who had an interesting take on this. He is a highly qualified individual but still thinks the panic around Covid19 is overblown. His take was that the government does not have your best interests at heart and thus we ought to take everything they say with a grain(s) of salt. I'm afraid he appears to have been infected with the GOPenza bug. If this is how relatively learned people think imagine the rank and file of the GOP.

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      cheerio

      I am not a member of the GOP but I agree with him regarding taking what is happening in DC with a grain of salt. I 95% distrust the legislation being crafted in response to the crisis.

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    DougCLE

    Man, there’s a lot of negativity in these comments... let me add some more. ;-D

    I think we’ll see a brief respite from the advance of this cultural fissure, similar to what we had after 9/11, but it won’t stick around. Nothing fundamental has shifted - the exodus from the parties has been toward the wings, not the center. A healthy Republican party would not throw the childish “RINO” around so much as it does. A healthy Democratic party would not have had a far-left-of-most-Democrats Bernie Sanders as its front runner for so much as a day.

    We all have our pet theories as to the root cause of this tribalism. My own is the “choose your news” nature of first cable and then the internet, with clickbait headlines running a close second. I’m sure you have your own. But it doesn’t matter which is the real cause, because none of them are going to go away because of CV.

    At most, we might pull together for a time because of shared feeling, but it won’t last, because feelings never do. What we need - what we’ve lost - is the ability to live peaceably with people who *don’t* share our feelings.

    Until we can fix that problem, all COVID-19 will have bought us is, ironically, some breathing room.

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  5. John Cheyney

    A year from now little will have changed from before the outbreak.

    People on the lower end of the financial spectrum will be even worse off. Many of them will lose jobs because the businesses they work for can’t outlast whatever damage ‘social distancing’ does to them. Their kids will not recover the education they are missing because their parents don’t have the resources to make schooling from home work. They would have been worse off anyway because the economy wasn’t really doing that much for them.

    Upper middle class people like me will do fine. Yes, my retirement fund is taking a bloodbath right now. However, buried in all those mutual funds are stocks of pharmaceutical and medical companies that will do very well (eventually) from this. My wife and I are both degreed professionals with steady jobs. We will adapt. I lived though 9/11 attacks. All we really had to show for it were ‘’First Responder’ discounts and a bunch of people who bought AR-15’s because they saw Navy SEAL’s carrying them on TV.

    The dividers on both sides of the spectrum will continue to divide us because that is what makes them money and gives them power. Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter will continue to aid this while paying lip service to free and open media.

    The United States will still be here as the worlds pre-eminent economy because, despite all of our faults, we are still the best thing going. The ideals this country were built on are magnificent, even if we never actually live up to them.

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      cheerio

      I agree. Actually, in my house --not much has changed as yet. Me and my better half are still going to work every day. Being essential can be viewed as a blessing or a curse. I hope neither of us get the extreme form of this virus. I am skeptical of the response of the federal government and its agencies such as the CDC. It has confirmed my worst fears of Trump. So I meditate and pray for the best outcome.

      I also have the same concern regarding social media. I don't use Facebook/Twitter/Instagram (gave them up for Lent and am finding life is improved without them). Instead I read newspapers, newsletters like this, Medium type article sites, books, and magazines. I do check in some anonymous topic specific message boards but avoid any radical (R&L) type environments. I probably spend too much on subs but I have discovered resources from my local library that allow me to access many publications with my library card number and through my school (I am taking an online class).

      I am interested in how this crisis will affect how we conduct elections.

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    Ray Salemi

    We will be stuck here until conservatives give up defining pro-life as anti-choice or stop making this issue a single-question litmus test.

    It is an unnecessary battle that cannot allow compromise from either side and has led to Evangelical support for Trump and his election.

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      cheerio

      You know, I think the power of persuasion and incentive can probably eliminate 95% of all abortions. But no, it seems they just want to coerce and shame people. Create a society where women feel supported and are supported in their pregnancies and child-rearing. Things like generous maternal leave policies, medical coverage, affordable or supported daycare, safe schools, parenting support, etc. You don't have to take away half the population's autonomy over their body.

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        Ray Salemi

        I’m sure more babies would be saved if the energy that has gone into trying to overturn Roe v. Wade were used to support what you’re saying here.

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          cheerio

          My suspicion is that political leaders will never look to that solution because that takes away a major motivator to their voting block. I mean, if they did this, the people might demand actual competence.

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    Nick H

    I doubt it will be the trigger. There's just too much inertia in the current system for a new, centrist party to break through. The risk for politicians who abandon their current parties for a new one is too great. It would only work if huge numbers switched simultaneously, and I think that's highly unlikely. It's more reasonable to think that one party or the other will stop catering to their more extreme elements and move to capture the center. Even that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.

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      Idontdocute

      I don't know. Getting locked up in a house with your gene pool for weeks unnumbered could get really motivational.

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    Peter A

    Meow? Moral Equivalent of War. Can a war on COVID-19 provide us a common enemy that allows us to move past our polarization? Something where we work together to overcome an obstacle put in front of us by a common enemy. Inspiring.
    I am skeptical though. Because I do not hear a common voice. I hear blame on our leaders and blame on Chinese leaders. I hear blame on hoarders and blame on thoughtless vectors.
    Has any pandemic ever united people politically?
    Maybe, I missed the point and it is not the common enemy. Maybe this is about the shakeup to routines of so many. The lessons that can be learned and a change of priorities. There will be smart people that will be provided with a rare set of data on how our culture behaves when our social structure has been shut down. We don't miss the water until it is gone.

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    Jason

    Great read. I think our divisions are too deep, with too high a percentage of the country embracing ideas outside of the founding vision, for us to come together outside of crisis. It's heartening that we still largely can during crisis, but I don't see the warming of those bonds as significant enough to carry through beyond the immediate sense of crisis.

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      Bill Nelson

      I find your reference to the founding vision as particularly compelling. For those of us who hold this vision as essential, those who do not will see the core of this vision as an impediment. Gov. Cuomo of NY has been particularly aggressive in grabbing new powers. And he stated that the states should not be left to make their own decisions, but directed by the federal government (note the conflict between these two positions).

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        cheerio

        He is demanding leadership and assistance. What he is getting is "It is not my responsibility."

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    Bill Nelson

    A favorite author of mine, Ursula Le Guin (science fiction) wrote a book called "The Lathe of Heaven" in which a young man's dreams came to be true, in odd ways. He dreamed of ending world conflict and the next morning found we were being attacked by aliens. He dreamed that all race issues would be solved, woke up and everyone was grey. And he was being manipulated by a psychologist, go figure.
    Major events can park issues for a time, but they come back. As an example, India's independence from the UK.

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