Eliana Willis

I absolutely hate political ads. They are usually nasty, formulaic, contradictory. Each will point out that candidate X is a lying, untrustworthy person who will destroy the very fabric of society. Candidate Y, however, will fix everything, if only I cast my vote their way. Switch candidates and repeat, repeat, repeat. Eventually they are recognizable by the tone of voice. My husband and I race for the remote to mute them, even when we agree with them.
We cast our ballots and awaited the outcomes with bated breath – with some cheers, some groans. Now, after days of counting, we have a new president. But the honest truth is that we are going to remain heavily divided.
Elections do not mute political animosity. We, the people, save our democracy when we reconnect at the personal level. Some people we see the most often may be the most at odds with us – neighbors, fellow worshipers, soccer parents, our own family.
How do I reach out to someone whose beliefs are diametrically opposed to my own? How do I retain my convictions while connecting?
Some want discussion to stop so life can return to normal. Normal means status quo. It means, “let me have my life back the way it was before.” If your life is one of generational wealth, privilege, economic opportunity, relatively good health, and all the freedoms and happiness those imply, that might be fine for you and others just like you.
The concept of democracy is based on the promise of freedom, rights and justice for all. We know that is absolutely not the case for everyone in the United States. Many are denied justice, generational wealth, quality education, medical care, housing and freedom. They are not afforded these due to skin color, place of birth, gender, gender identity, physical or mental condition. Simply returning to normal means abandoning them. And that is not acceptable.
Most of my life, I’ve been surrounded by the Appalachian Mountains. They are a fixed part of my horizon. They represent strength and stability, born of the Earth’s crust, pushed and shaped by circumstances beyond their control. They stand the test of time, largely immutable. I envision my convictions as mountains. Here are my places of strength from which I reach out to others.
My mountains are antiracism, affordable healthcare and justice for all. My beliefs are based on the notion that when any of us is marginalized, we all are. These concepts bolster what I do, what I study, how I spend my money and how I cast my votes. It is essential to me to entice others to those mountains if I want to see those changes.
This requires moving out of my comfort zone to find others equally willing to act in good faith. Trust and respect allow us to hear one another. Otherwise, our words bounce off the walls between us. A level of transparency can give us authentic points of connection. Difficult conversations ensue as we as ask people to talk about their mountains and why they chose those mountains. We then truly listen to their answers, trying to understand. And we, ourselves, participate in moments of true reflection to talk about our own mountains.
Some people are simply tourists, wandering the terrain of their own lives not having chosen to stand on any mountains. A few have been enticed into a course of action that they may not actually want, but are unsure of their options. And others are perfectly content with their mountains, but are at least willing to discuss them.
Some groups of people have been speaking for decades, and we have not been listening at all. We can uncenter ourselves and pay attention to what they are saying. We are responsible to educate ourselves, reaching out only as we are better informed and cause no further harm.
In reaching out, I can plant seeds of understanding which perhaps are brought to fruition by others. Some may never come to a place of compassion or comprehension. There are more people out there who want to make this democracy work than those who do not. They just might be a bit overwhelmed at the moment and swept along in the current, trying to find a firm footing once again.
We, the people, cast our votes. And now we must take ownership of our democracy.
Susan Bro works as an advocate for positive social change through the Heather Heyer Foundation and hate crime legislation More

It brought a tear to the eye and a hand to the heart. Joe Biden, in his acceptance speech, called for unity and healing. He would work “to win the confidence of the whole people”. I just hope he doesn’t mean it. If he does, it means that nothing has been learned since Barack Obama made roughly the same speech in 2008.
The United States of America is fundamentally divided. It is divided between exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed. There is no unity to be found with kleptocrats and oligarchs. Any attempt to pretend there is will lead to political failure. It will lead not to healing but to a deflected polarisation. If Americans are not polarised against plutocrats, they will be polarised against each other.
I understand that, in a sentimental nation, bromides like Biden’s might be considered necessary. But I fear he believes what he says. When he spoke to wealthy donors at the Carlyle hotel in Manhattan last year, he told them not only that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change”, but also that “you have to be able to reach consensus under our system”. In this context, consensus looks like appeasement.
Obama’s attempt to reconcile irreconcilable forces, to paper over the chasms, arguably gave Donald Trump his opening. Rather than confronting the banks whose reckless greed had caused the financial crisis, he allowed his Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, to “foam the runway” for them by allowing 10 million families to lose their homes. His justice department and the attorney general blocked efforts to pursue apparent wrongdoing by the financiers. He pressed for trade agreements that would erode workers’ rights and environmental standards, and presided over the widening of inequality and the concentration of wealth, casualisation of labour and record mergers and acquisitions. In other words, he failed to break the consensus that had grown around the dominant ideology of our times: neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism has been neatly described by William Davies, a professor at Goldsmiths College, as “the disenchantment of politics by economics”. It sees politics as an ineffective or illegitimate means of social improvement. Decision-making should be transferred to “the market”, a euphemism for the power of money. Through buying and selling, we establish a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Any attempt to interfere in the discovery of this natural order – such as taxing the rich, redistributing wealth and regulating business – will inhibit social progress.
Neoliberalism disenchants politics by sucking the power out of people’s votes. When governments abandon their ambition to change social outcomes or deliver social justice, politics become irrelevant to people’s lives. It is perceived as the chatter of a remote elite. Disenchantment becomes disempowerment.
Before neoliberalism triggered the financial crash of 2008, its doctrines were treated as orthodoxy across the political spectrum. Obama had a chance to break from this cage, to confront the powers that “the market” disguised and the social divisions it caused. But he chose not to take it. Grace and decency alone cannot defeat structural injustice.
Trump stormed into the political vacuum. Chaotic and unscrupulous, in some respects he offended the neoliberal consensus, ripping up trade agreements, while in others he reinforced it. But the important point is that he was a monster the consensus created. His success was a product of the fake unity and fake healing of elite political agreement. When mainstream politics offered only humiliation and frustration, people turned to a virulent, demagogic anti-politics.
Biden has turned leftwards since he was Obama’s vice-president. There are some strong policies in his platform. But there is also a determination not to break the consensus by directly confronting the donor class. His “clean energy revolution”, which envisages massive investments in renewables and greener infrastructure, covers half the necessary effort to prevent climate breakdown. But without an active programme to retire dirty infrastructure and leave fossil fuels in the ground – in other words, directly confronting fossil capital – it will be less effective than he imagines.

His measures to support small business are positive, but they will count for little unless he also breaks up big business, starting with big tech. He has promised to raise taxes for the rich. But the plutocrats will laugh at him until he wages war on tax havens and secrecy regimes, starting with his home state of Delaware. Unless Biden unites the people against the oligarchs who dominate the nation, the people will remain divided against each other.
Biden will be tethered by circumstance. If the Democrats fail to win both Senate seats in Georgia, he will face a hostile upper house. Trump’s appointments ensure that not only the supreme court but also many federal judges will seek to frustrate progressive measures. Much of his time will be spent firefighting the pandemic, and the economic and social crises it has caused.
It might seem strange to note that the US was lucky to get Trump, but it was, in this respect: while he is power-mad and entirely lacking in conscience and empathy, he is also impetuous and incompetent, and failed to follow a clear programme. In other words, he was a hopeless wannabe dictator. He was also unfortunate: were it not for the pandemic, he might have won again. But he has blazed a trail for someone more effective: someone with Trump’s absence of moral constraint, but with a determined programme and a cold, strategic mind. If Biden fails to break the political consensus, in 2024 he could open the door to a competent autocrat. Writing in the Atlantic, Zeynep Tufekci names some plausibly frightening candidates.
Before we consider solutions, I think we have to recognise the possibility that US politics might not be fixable. The system is constitutionally padlocked; beholden to the power of money, which is reinforced by the supreme court’s catastrophic Citizens United decision, removing the caps on political spending by lobbyists; perhaps now terminally confused, frightened and angry. But if there is a solution, it must involve the re-enchantment of politics.
What does this look like? I suspect it means a tub-thumping left populism, inveighing against billionaires, against big money in politics, against the stripping away of public protections, against white collar crime and in favour of the radical redistribution of both wealth and political power. It would reach past an obstructive Senate and supreme court to appeal directly to the people. It would build and sustain social movements that are bigger than the Democratic party, using its activist base not just to win elections but also to drive home political change.
Though Biden is a political chameleon, and though I will never abandon hope, it is hard to see him fulfilling this role. Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic, but at this early stage his presidency looks to me like an interregnum between something terrible and something much worse.
• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist More