Elevate or embolden? Navigating Our Social Divisions

What do we do with people who feel alienated?

MLA: You can still get a copy of the book if you sign up for an annual membership at $20 or above by September 1st. Help me out and tell a friend or two!

How should we respond to social movements where people feel alienated and express their anger and frustration in less-than-constructive ways?

While the election of Donald J. Trump brought the question to the forefront of America’s attention, the fracturing of America’s social life over the past decade has made it one of the most important questions of our time. The mostly buried sentiments of resentment and alienation that animated birther conspiracy theories in the Obama years have come out into the open, and in some ways have been deepened by our major institutions’ progressive reaction to the Trump years. Or we might look at America’s discussions about race: the flowering of progressive accounts of racial identity in 2020 had roots in narratives of unjustified police aggression that run deep in many corners of black America. The result was an expansion of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives into most of our major institutions. Though the political and legislative changes have been few, the anger has been effectively channeled into winning more minority representation in the media and more mandatory trainings, well, everywhere. 

I am not interested here in adjudicating the respective claims beneath each movement. As a default, I am inclined to think that social movements that attain a sufficiently large number of people either have extremely sophisticated media machines behind them or are able to tap into some real, legitimate grievances—and probably both. Of course, that default offers one plausible answer to what to do with social movements where people are expressing their frustration or anger, namely, to try to distinguish their legitimate concerns from those that are more dubious and, if nothing else, to recognize the sources of grievance and frustration. At the same time, recognition can feel like pretty thin gruel when people vote against you. Instead, those who are alienated want representation—not in the media, which is nothing more than a consolation prize, but by their government, which has been appointed to protect and defend their interests as a people. 

We might call that way of dealing with alienated social movements the “Josh Hawley strategy.” Hawley rather infamously objected to the certification of votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona on January 6th, a day on which our government was dishonored and the place of our democratic deliberations was sacked. Hawley’s argument for taking such a strategy was straightforward and, in a way, eminently sensible: democratic procedures can mitigate the worst and strongest impulses of a people group by giving them representation in the heart of their government, a representation they may not receive otherwise. Hawley was not an election-denialist then (I have no idea where he stands now). Instead, he attempted to offer a nuanced argument for why there were legitimate concerns about election fraud: in giving an angry constituency a voice, he elevated their reasons and in so doing sought to give them credibility and (dare I say it?) respectability. 

The danger of trying to elevate a movement, though, is that it emboldens its worst and most radical proponents. Setting aside the scandal of January 6th itself, the expectation for speaking about the 2020 election among Trump’s most ardent constituency seems to have become even more extreme than it was even before. What Hawley flagged up as “concerns” have, in many corners, been reduced to an outright rejection of 2020’s legitimacy. The nuance and qualifications required to elevate any social movement invariably get lost in the maelstrom that makes such a position democratically plausible to stake out in the first place. It might be the case that to elevate simply is to embolden. (Again: I am not at all interested in the accuracy or legitimacy of any of the substantive claims of the election here. If you don’t like this example, try another—say, the temperance movement and Prohibition, which I think had similar dynamics.) 

In an environment that is as divided as ours, though, it serves the other side well to ensure that the nuances of the other person’s position are lost. Those who attempt to ‘elevate’ their sides’ arguments, to ennoble them with precision and qualifications, often become proxy figures for the most radical edges of a social movement. It does not matter how legitimate the grievances that started the riots of 2020 might be: once towns are burning down and people are losing their communities and homes, those who attempted to elevate the reasons at work within that movement will perpetually be pariahs to those who object to such conduct. People might try to elevate a social movement, but in this media environment, they will be held accountable for emboldening its most radical elements. 

These dynamics also explain, I think, why those who attempt to ‘elevate the discourse’ online often become proxy figures for our online culture wars. David French and Russell Moore function in a totemic way for some evangelicals on the right, who regularly accuse them for being capitulators who spend their time catering to the left while pummeling their right. Alternately, one might also read them as attempting to search for legitimate reasons for grievance or opposition to (say) traditionally Christian social policies and both recognize those reasons and address them. It does not matter how much nuance they offer or how many times they protest they are still conservative and oppose abortion: when arguments become extensions of social movements, those who attempt to elevate or find reasons within the “other side” and will be tagged with emboldening the most radical elements within it.

The discourse around “winsomeness” and “third-wayism” that happened earlier this year fits this pattern, as well: the attempt to offer a respectable, elevated form of more radical, vicious criticisms could not escape reducing Tim Keller to a proxy in a larger cultural war. Not surprisingly, the author of that article was quickly swept up in a similar dynamic: the nuances of his position were eclipsed, and his attempt to elevate the anti-winsomeness position plausibly emboldened more reactionary and extreme forms of Christian politics.

How should we navigate this dynamic? I honestly do not know, but I suspect we should attempt to detach our thinking from the enclaves that we so easily trap ourselves in and attempt, however difficult it might be, to quell suspicion about each other and simply make and receive arguments as they stand. Opting out of a movement is, of course, to consign oneself to irrelevance: there is an undeniable energy that comes from being a part of a team that tries to defeat someone else’s team. And there really is a fact of the matter, a right and a wrong, that we have to say and announce without hesitation or equivocation. I am not at all interested in quiescence, as I think I make clear enough in my forthcoming book. But the subordination of our online discourse and discussion to such ‘team’ dynamics effectively participates in the reduction of discourse to power that I think it important to resist—and not only because it is the mirror image of a similar type of subordination that has long gone on among progressives. (The growth on the hard right of simply posting photos of their intellectual enemies, as though that were an “argument,” is just one way in which online discourse among Christians has degenerated; memes are another.) 

That answer is woefully insufficient, I realize. But then, we might need some people who try to opt out of the intellectual wars and simply try to say what the truth is as they see it, regardless of which team or community they alienate, consequences be damned. But then, that would be my mood these days. After all, I am about to teach Plato’s Apology. The only team Socrates had was the one he constantly interrogated and told were wrong. And if he was alone in his death, holding fast to the truth as he saw it, he most certainly was not forgotten. 

Around the Web

What is the embryo? That’s the question we need to be asking in light of our ability to create them (what?) out of stem cells.

John Duns Scotus was one of the most influential medieval theologians. But who was he, and why does he matter? There is no one better (literally) to answer than my friend Tom Ward. (His new book on Scotus was one of my favorite reads this year!)

The Penultimate Word

“Let us learn from this man not to call the rich lucky nor the poor unfortunate. Rather, if we are to tell the truth, the rich man is not the one who has collected many possessions but the one who needs few possessions, and the poor man is not the one who has no possessions but the one who has many desires. We ought to consider this the definition of poverty and wealth. So if you see someone greedy for many things, you should consider him the poorest of all, even if he has acquired everyone’s money. If, on the other hand, you see someone with few needs, you should count him the richest of all, even if he has acquired nothing. For we are accustomed to judge poverty and affluence by the disposition of the mind, not by the measure of one’s substance.” — Chrysostom