The disunity that plagues America imposes high costs on the nation. A diverse citizenry must work together despite partisan differences to advance the common good, but disunity produces dysfunction.
Citizens who distrust and not infrequently despise one another can hardly be expected to jointly pursue long-term goals or rely on one another to achieve short-term fixes. Small wonder, then, that the United States faces mounting challenges. These include ensuring the even-handed administration and enforcement of the laws; beating back inflation and averting a looming entitlement and debt crisis; guarding the border and implementing a rational immigration policy; educating students to understand their country’s virtues and weaknesses the better to uphold the nation’s principles and preserve and reform its political institutions; fighting crime; assisting those who are unable to care for themselves; and countering a rising tide of authoritarianism led by Iran, Russia, and China.
The sharply conflicting partisan reactions in late May to former President Donald Trump’s conviction by a New York jury on 34 felony counts illustrate the disconcerting scope of the nation’s disunity. Large swaths of Democrats rejoiced at Trump’s conviction for a crime that few of them could describe accurately or defend persuasively. If anything impinged on progressives’ sweet sense that the nation had been saved and justice had been served, it was that Trump had not been immediately placed in chains and hauled off to prison.
Meanwhile, during the 24 hours that followed the announcement of Trump’s guilty verdict, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee raised an astonishing $53 million, including a record $34.8 million from small-dollar donors. Giving voice to surging grassroots support, a swelling chorus of Republican officeholders and conservative public intellectuals decried the weaponization of law by President Biden and the Democratic party to discredit the other party’s presidential candidate and disable his campaign.