When you expand a technology, you expand it towards both ends. The divine and the profane. With AI we receive breakthrough medical research AND waifu porn bots. With crypto we receive community owned infrastructure and endless memecoin rugs.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how this expansion towards both ends relates to politics as we’ve been in the first month of the 2nd Trump term.
My friend who is currently getting their PhD at Wharton, where we also did undergrad together, came over a couple weeks ago to hang out. We started discussing politics and how we were mutually feeling. They probably view themselves as squarely left, and I view myself as dead center.
And as we were discussing how the left loss and how the right won, they shared with me a fantastic framework. “BRIDGING VS BONDING”
It means exactly how it reads. Bridging are tactics that reach out and pull people in. Bonding are tactics that reinforce the people already together.
This election was about bridging vs bonding. The left thought they were bridging, but they were actually bonding and leaking key votes. The right, as shown by how many people changed sides this election, clearly won their bridging campaign.
But now that the winner is clear, a new responsibility emerges. The right has to bond, but there is a dark underbelly that has to get dealt with.
The problem with winning is that it is a totally confirming image, despite the reality that Americans are left with binary tradeoffs.
How do you bond a coalition where (I believe) 10% of it, is directly racist and feel confirmed in that?
That 10% has to be confronted with the reality that they won because many minorities put identity politics to the side, and voted along the lines of their other set of values. Whether this directly changes their spiritual condition — because racism is a spiritual condition - doesn’t fully matter. What matters is the party, both officially and in the discourse of the public commons, perpetually rejects that language from their platform.
Isn’t that a bit naive? Maybe. But the fact of the matter is that the bonding activities of the winning party will have to bring the coalition to recognize each other more and more. And members will be confronted with those that look and believe different things. Like all winning parties, they risk fracturing and losing the next 4 years DESPITE winning the seat for it.
What should be the goal of the new bonding?
The same way that I mentioned folks put aside their identity politics, and elevated their other values, remains true here. The 10% needs to be told that what their holding on to is extreme and abhorrent. AND that even despite that, if they are willing to address it in themselves - they are still welcomed to the table with open arms. Forgiveness is the strength of every coalition. But as my mother says, we cannot love people to hell. Address the 10% or risk bridges built from the other side prepared to pull people back.
What should be the goal of the new bridging? This is still important for enacting change.
Set the mimetic example of forgiveness; the right needs to extend a hand to the left towards productive change. Or else you restart the theater, and that may not stop you, but it will allow them to produce counter images that confirm the narrative you should be trying to avoid.
Have them agree on the principle of what these efforts are. The right is having too much fun reveling in the hate that they can produce, despite the efforts actually being aimed well. No one in the Federal Government, nor aware citizens observing the Federal Government, should be able to say with a straight face “reducing spending is bad”. And again, maybe I’m naive, but bridge building starts with having them say that out loud. And then continuing on the effectiveness path with tactics debate not immovable image theater.
What does this nation become on the road to progress. We stand at the edge of technical innovation and distributed scale our forefathers couldn’t even fathom. But if we care nothing for the soul of each citizen, as we continue to shift the hands of power as this republic was designed to do — it is far too easy to not address the infected molar, and risk losing our jaw.
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.
Live in the light