The Unity Grift

Source: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ (Wikicommons)

If you’re an objective analyst of U.S. society at the current moment, you can’t deny it is a society structured by division: a racial wealth gap where African-American wealth is about 7% of white wealth; a level of economic inequality not seen since the gilded age; a cultural “polarization” of identity based on geography, religion, and partisan attachment.

Despite these objective divisions, the main strategy of Democratic party establishment candidates has been to promise an alluring concept of unity. The latest version of this idea is the campaign Pete Buttigeig. In the days leading up to the Iowa caucus, his closing message struck a familiar refrain: “We needed a new path forward, a path that welcomed people instead of pushing them away, brought them together instead of driving them apart, because this is our best and maybe our last shot.”

This is exactly the same tactic employed by Barrack Obama who rose to stardom with the lines at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention: “There are those who are preparing to divide us…the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.”

But, it wasn’t just Obama, this was the main message of Beto O’Rourke — a young, fresh-faced candidate, with vaguely inspiring rhetoric about unity and bringing people together. In his infamous, “I’m Just Born to Be In It” cover story for Vanity Fair, he argued, “If I bring something to this…I think it is my ability to listen to people, to help bring people together to do something that is thought to be impossible.”

The unity message sounds great. Imagine if an inspiring politician could actually overcome division through “leadership” and inspiring rhetoric. But, what we should have learned from Obama is that the vague “unity” message is a cover for maintaining the very things that divide us: an oligarchic power system that only works for the super-rich.

After an election based on an inspiring “Yes we can!” rhetoric, Obama populated his administration with Wall Street insiders and presided over 8 years of skyrocketing inequality and the decline in African American wealth wrought by predatory financial capital. By the end of his 8 years, we were as divided as ever — and, on cue, the country narrowly elected the most divisive President in (perhaps) the entire history of this country.

The only alternative to this message of unity is to acknowledge division within society and argue overcoming division requires confronting political actors responsible for it. Obviously, Trump won the Presidency by emphasizing nationalist and xenophobic rhetoric based on scapegoating immigrants, Muslims, and foreign countries for the decline of American “greatness”. He pledged to bring (white) America together through confronting this insidious foreign forces.

Bernie Sanders also emphasizes that our society is divided between the 1% of millionaires and billionaires who rig our political system to their own benefit while everyone else suffers. He argues this division will not be overcome unless we build a kind of political movement that can confront and take down the power of this 1%.

It should be no surprise that Pete Buttigeig is raising money from billionaires and holding private Wine Cave fundraisers, while also spouting vague notions of “healing” and “coming together” as a nation. This is a grift for maintaining the power of the people funding his campaign.

And, the only people who buy it are the increasingly affluent base of the Democratic Party — suburban, educated professionals. This population has managed to cling to a modicum of economic security amidst the wreckage of neoliberal inequality. For them, our “polarization” just seems irrational and depressing. Since, for them, life is relatively stable with access to secure health care and a steady income, they are relatively immune to the real suffering where life expectancy is in decline and most families struggle paycheck to paycheck.

For them, the idea that our nation could be brought together through reason, logic, and inspiration is highly attractive. Pete also fits perfectly into their meritocratic vision of what politics should be about: a really smart person — Rhodes scholar, speaker of multiple languages — who can overcome division through magical political “leadership” and finding “bipartisan consensus.”

What is avoided in the unity grift is the idea that actually overcoming division requires political conflict and struggle against those in power. For the already comfortable, this sounds acrimonious and divisive — as the New York Times editorial board said of Sanders: “we see little advantage to exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.” Why be divisive when life for these people is generally OK? Why not use reason and logic rather than political combat?

But, while the affluent professional base of the Democratic coalition are lulled to sleep through happy sounds of coming together and a “new path forward” toward unity, the social conditions for the vast majority get worse.

This is why the cash-soaked message of “healing division” is also a major electoral vulnerability. The professional class base of the Democrats is also a small minority of the country — maybe 20%-25%. The conditions of life for the majority in society is so dire they are angry; they are looking for someone to blame. Many look at the political system with cynical disgust and simply don’t believe the kind of platitudes that is the stuff of Pete’s campaign: “We need the right kind of leadership. We need to build it out in a way that can draw as many people as possible. And we need to spread a sense of hope.”

The “hopey changey” stuff has played out. It’s increasingly more effective to explain how you will dismantle the system in Washington — it’s either “drain the swamp” or a “political revolution.”

We need to confront we live in a moment where the “center” is collapsing and there are two political movements based on conflict and confrontation on offer: nationalism and hate versus democratic socialism and solidarity. If liberals keep falling for corporate funded vagaries around “unity”, it will not only allow Donald Trump a second term in 2020, it will lay the groundwork for increasing fascism in the decades ahead.