Politics, localism, and responding to the coronavirus
Looking back on some thoughts about how COVID-19 could spur a turn toward localism, and what went wrong
I’m in the process of sharing some short pieces from my original website on this platform, mainly so they’re all in one place.
Today, my thoughts on how the coronavirus pandemic could force people to examine the local in a way they hadn’t before (from March 17, 2020). I’ve also added some language at the end, reflecting on what actually happened, and what that means.
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Four weeks ago I rented a van from my university to drive a group of students to St. Louis for the annual Midwest Model United Nations conference. Three weeks ago I was getting ready to board a flight to Oregon for a memorial service, which would bring most of my extended family together for the first time in many years. And one week ago there were whispers on our campus about possible changes in operations, but just whispers.
In light of the unprecedented social response to the coronavirus, these recent events seem like distant memories.
My university has closed to the vast majority of students (only those unable to travel home for whatever reason were allowed to stay), and our classes are in the process of migrating online. I had layovers in San Francisco on my flights to and from Oregon; it makes me wonder what that airport is like these days. And there's no way that the Model UN conference would be happening now.
One of the major consequences of the coronavirus pandemic is an increasing awareness of our local context. Yes, we're still receiving news from around the world from the comfort (safety?) of our homes. But with an emphasis on self-quarantining and the government strongly urging social distancing, we are all likely becoming more cognizant of the world intimately around us.
We are still paying attention to the federal government's response to the pandemic, of course, and we will still have praise or criticism of how it is handled on a daily basis. But the federal government's response, while important, touches us less than how our community is dealing with the virus. The businesses struggling, schools closing, and families affected touch all of us in a way that no national emergency has in in several decades, perhaps since World War II.
This morning, University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket commented on Ezra Klein's new book, Why We're Polarized. Specifically, Masket emphasized Klein's conclusion that one solution to the endemic of polarized politics is to change the way we consume information, reorienting our perspective from the national to the local. When we focus on national politics and elections, we more easily lose perspective on what is happening in our communities. The outrage of the day can distract us from the immediate needs of those in our midst, including the lonely and vulnerable.
And this is one possible silver lining of the coronavirus's complete upheaval of American life over the next several weeks and months. We are now facing an uncomfortable reality, being forced to stay in our communities, to slow down, and to reflect on the consequences of national and local political decisions on where we are. Some of us will be more familiar with this process than others. But for the first time in many of our lives, it is something we will all be experiencing together.
As a result of this, perhaps our addiction to national politics, horserace electoral coverage, and partisan outrage will wane, if only for a while. In its place could emerge attention to the local, where abstract polarization is confronted with the faces and struggles of our neighbors. And while churches continue to struggle with new, unprecedented challenges, Christians can continue to be the body of Christ to a community sorely in need of both physical and spiritual relief.
The fever of political polarization will most likely return once the coronavirus pandemic has subsided. But a break of any length, regardless of the reason, would be refreshing for our collective body and soul.
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In a sense it’s quaint reading these words from last year, at the beginning of the pandemic in the United States. In less than a year we’ve seen over 500,000 deaths attributed to the pandemic, not including deaths related to the pandemic, such as suicides or conditions exacerbated by strains on the medical system. It’s been no less than an unmitigated disaster and a generational tragedy.
Politically, we didn’t respond in the way I thought we might. Focus remained on the federal government’s response (such as it was) through the summer, as President Trump waffled between talking points and frequently undercut the government’s top medical experts. This contributed to the polarization of the pandemic, with Republicans and Democrats initially split on both the seriousness of the pandemic and the appropriateness of various government actions, including state and local mask mandates and business and school closures. Even today, there remains a solid partisan split on masks and vaccines.
But President Trump’s early rhetoric on the pandemic did not cause our collective dysfunction in response to the pandemic; it was merely a symptom of a larger malady. Liliana Mason’s Uncivil Agreement convincingly argues that Americans have made politics more and more of our identity, as ideology has become further aligned with geography, religion, education, and class. As a result, we’re more likely than ever to treat those who disagree with us politically as “other,” while simultaneously being less likely to identify common ground. Why should our response to a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic be any different?
The roots of this problem are debatable, and attributable to many different factors — declining social capital, media echo chambers, and our system of primary elections are three of my favorite explanations. But whatever the reason for this increased polarization, the outcomes are the same, and for a system of government dependent on trust and cooperation, they are not sustainable.
Recently, I have found myself realizing that certain ideas that I hold are neither original nor all that useful, particularly when it comes to the ideas that you recount in this article. Instead of offering a diatribe about how polarization is bad for umpteenth time in my fledgling intellectual career, I would like instead to launch into a diatribe about the dearth of those who know how to pull the levers of power.
I definitely think it would be worthwhile to start considering concrete solutions to polarization and the frustrating tendency for American politics to toss the concept of federalism out the window in favor of a passionate love (and hate) for the federal government. It's as if "states rights" was some sort of dirty word, only to be associated with Jim Crow and slavery. As Americans who are politically motivated, we need plans, backup plans, and "never-see-the-light-of-the-press" plans. Without these, our discussion is severely handicapped. As of right now, we are apparently cognizant of the fact that we are chained to a wall and that we cannot see what lies before us, but no one has even dared to dream of what they might do (1) if they were free and (2) how to actually become free. Maybe it's just that I'm not caught up on the most avant-garde political rhetoric the internet and what old dusty library books have to offer. I doubt it though.
To get back on point, what I so often hear, from both intellectual elites and garden-variety partisans, is that we need more of "x ideology" as a solution to almost any problem. It's quite maddening. Some of my most high-powered classes in terms of guest appearances have boiled down to establishing what most of us already know in a way that bloats our language but doesn't stimulate our problem-solving skills. The ability to formulate, consider, and ask questions is an invaluable skill, but I can't help but notice that planning, answering, and advocating seems to have somewhat fallen by the wayside.
Most importantly, I want to state this: the status quo got us here, and our planning should at least in part recognize this. I want to recognize and affirm the beautiful achievements of liberal democracy and free market capitalism, but at the same time, we Americans are headed for an iceberg, and none of the helmsmen currently available to the electorate seem able to yank the wheel far enough in the opposite direction to stop us from making contact. We ought to act quickly before any solution at all becomes too radical. Unfortunately, our government was not designed to act with efficiency.