The Tribal Clash of Greater Suburbia - Issue #16

Can we all just get along?

Welcome to Issue #16! This week’s essay is by our friend JB. Come for the theoretical suburban battle of the parades, stay for the insight on how we might find common ground.

Thank you to all those who have shared the newsletter in recent weeks! We like to think that we’re building a rare kind of community here, and we’re so grateful that you’re here.

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Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash

I think we all crave narratives to help us make sense of the world. Even those who consider themselves more analytical eventually turn their analysis into a ‘story’ or ‘takeaway.’ 

This Hidden Brain episode from years back provides a great illustration, mainly focusing on the “deep story” of Trump supporters, but making the case that both liberals and conservatives have these shared-if-not-totally-agreed-upon narratives that anchor their respective points of view. 

The idea is that we each want to be able to give a sort of elevator pitch–even if just in our own minds–that can briefly sum up who we are, what we stand for, and, often, what or who we stand against. For most of us, day-to-day life is just a lot easier if we can, at least in our minds, separate the “good guys” from the “bad guys.” 

But the older I get, the more difficult it becomes to draw such hard and fast distinctions. I’ve just had too many conversations at this point aimed at separating the heroes from the villains. And I’m not sure anything productive can come of them. 

Ultimately, to say The Left is Evil or The Right is Evil or Democrats are Evil or Republicans are Evil is just like saying The Media is Evil or Corporate America is Evil or Wall St. is Evil.  People say all those things all the time, but they are all gross oversimplifications. In my experience, most people, even those who seem to wield power and influence, are simply mucking through based on their own imperfect understanding of how things ought to work. 

Almost nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, “I’m a bad guy. I embrace that designation and I look forward to another day of evil scheming and nefarious activity.” 

Honestly, part of me would envy the self-awareness of anyone who did. 

So then, what is at the root of these deep-seated convictions or “deep stories”? I’ve been wondering if nature might be just as responsible as nurture. 

Recently I engaged in a little thought experiment. 

For reference, I live on a suburban street lined with about a dozen nearly identical brick ranches on either side–a slice of the cookie-cutter suburbs our former president seems to believe are under threat from BLM and The Left, more broadly. 

But I thought, so if I saw a BLM protest marching down one end of my street and a MAGA-faithful parade coming the other way, and I had to join one group or another, which would I choose?

Forget about parsing the nuances of each side's arguments for a moment.  No time for Wikipedia-ing. Here they come, after all. 

Instead let’s allow ourselves, just for the moment, to judge the books by their respective covers, let our biases run unchecked, and simply choose. It’s rednecks vs. soy boys; radicals vs. deplorables; whatever stereotypes you want to apply. 

Let’s not pretend, even without identifying signage, that we can’t tell these two crowds apart. You’ve got a sea of red, white, and blue, flag-waving, pickup-driving dudes and ladies rolling in from one end. Marching from the other side, mostly on foot, mostly clad in black t-shirts and bandanas, carrying homemade signs, is a ragtag group of activists and eccentrics. 

“Join us, JB,” they call. 

“No, JB, join us.” 

There’s no doubt I’d be with the radicals. Even if many, or even most of them, don’t actually reflect my precise political viewpoints. That’s just my tribe. It always has been, despite many endeavors by friends and family over the years to coax me to the other end of the street. 

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Two firsts I remember vividly from my teens might help illuminate my point. 

When I was 15, I got a job with a couple of guys from my parents’ church painting houses for the summer. Every afternoon their old boombox with the neverending orange extension cord would blare Rush Limbaugh for hours. My reaction was visceral, gut-level. I hated him. It didn’t really matter what he was saying, I found him to be an arrogant, blustering, aggrieved, and deeply unpleasant blowhard. 

Fortunately, I had my walkman, along with some Bob Marley, Sublime, and Beastie Boys tapes. I would try to find a space far from the radio, high up on an eave or on the other side of whatever house so I could listen to my music in peace. There, in stark contrast to old Rush, I heard about the Buffalo Soldier and what went down on April 29, 1992. 

That brings me to the second first (second first?) I remember so vividly: my first time hearing Rage Against the Machine. I was about the same age, sitting in the back of a bus on my way to an 8th-grade basketball game. My friend leaned across the aisle and handed me his walkman. “My cousin gave me this,” he said. “Listen.” 

I slipped the worn, foam headphones over my ears and I was transported. I loved everything about it. 

Now, at age 15 or so I wasn’t really in a position to evaluate anything either Rush or Rage was saying against facts, figures, history, or any of it. It seemed safe to say both were outraged for different reasons. But when it boiled down to it, Rage resonated with me, and Rush very much did not. 

Looking back on the 25 years that have passed since that bus ride, the broad message of “F– you, I won’t do what you tell me,” could pretty much sum up a lot of my life choices. Versus a message of “radicals are attacking our traditions and values,” which to me, just honestly, my gut reaction was, “Hell yeah, we are.” 

I feel like to an extent this stuff is truly just baked into us. It’s a story as old as our culture. Hippies and squares. Jocks and freaks. Conservatives and progressives. 

It might not matter that much if my tribe was “right” or “wrong,” assuming such rightness or wrongness was somehow provable. And it might not even matter if you told me the other side had the better odds of winning the battle. I’d still go with my tribe, the way you might stand by your family, your hometown, or your favorite sports team. 

I’ve been arguing with certain friends about politics for nigh on two decades now. And while our views on various issues have shifted some, we fundamentally fall into the same broad categories today as we did back when we first began these discussions back in college. 

Perhaps you have similar friends and/or family in your own life. How much time have you spent trying to win an endless argument? And might it all boil down to a difference that’s less about politics and more about personality? 

And so if we think about the two groups coming down my street, ready to clash in the middle, how much longer are the odds of getting these complete strangers to switch sides or see eye to eye? 

Slim to nil in my opinion. I hope you’ll pre-forgive these upcoming stereotypes; I’m trying to use them semi-responsibly to help think this through. But how can a tie-dyed treehugger become a deer-hunting good old boy? Or can you really expect one of these dudes to trade in their F-150 for a Prius, or to cancel his touch football game to put on some harem pants and start playing hacky sack? 

Extrapolating immensely, I just wonder if some of us are more naturally inclined toward defending and preserving traditions, while others of us are more naturally inclined toward challenging them.

That’s what might explain the many long, unsettling conversations I had with my parents, pastors, and youth leaders during my teen years. I was considered the Black Sheep of the youth group, not because I drank or partied or got into mischief outside of church, but because I’d question things like the morality of the doctrine of predestination, whether war could ever be biblically justified, or if Christians could learn anything from Eastern religions. 

I think my parents might have preferred finding a joint in my sock drawer to all that. 

So on the one hand, we hear a lot about how the MAGA faithful are less trying to preserve a political ideology than a certain “American Way” of life. And on the other side, we’ve always had people who are resistant to that way of life, either because it doesn’t make adequate space for their own cultural traditions, or because, like me, you’re just an ass who likes to be different. 

And so to have these two groups clash in the middle of my street and shout at each other doesn’t seem like it would lead to anything except escalating outrage on both sides. 

But could you possibly get the two sides to come together in the middle of the street and A. not kill each other and B. not all become one or the other, but C. just try and see each other as human beings rather than as ‘The Enemy.’ Try to figure out what it is the other side values, and, if we can’t all agree on how to live, at least find a way to let each other live, and live side by side. 

Physically, of course, we already do this. Around my neighborhood you’d find plenty of “Trump 2020” and “Make America Great Again” signs, along with “Biden 2020” and those “We believe…” signs. We all still say hello to one another and comment about the weather. And maybe that’s about as far as we’re gonna get. And maybe that’s enough. 

We’ve got to accommodate one another, to an extent, out of necessity. Nobody wants all-out suburban warfare to take over our neighborhood. And I doubt most of us truly want to see a second Civil War in America more broadly. 

And so I wonder if while we make physical space for one another out of necessity, we might also more deliberately make space for one another mentally, understanding that every person’s perspective is formed from an infinitely complex combination of experiences and circumstances, on top of, possibly, some significant hard-wiring. 

As unpalatable as we may find each others’ political stances, there are places we can find common ground as people (you’ve probably already done so with certain friends and family). Maybe that’s the best we can do, at least for now, as the living, breathing, continuously morphing idea of “American Culture” continues to reshape itself, steadfastly resisting a static definition, as it always has. 

This may still be a tall order. But it certainly seems more realistic than imagining that one group can win over–or win out over–the other. And it’s a better use of our time, I’d argue, even if it doesn’t work. 

I’ve got a few ideas on how to get started. And I’d love to hear some of yours. Stay tuned! 

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Some Sounds to Listen To…

Fitz: It’s likely that no band has had a greater impact on my life than Pedro the Lion. I’ll never forget when my friend (and former bandmate!) Aaron asked if I’d ever heard of them. I hadn’t, and I remember him being surprised. We were on a ten-day camping trip at the time, but as soon as we got home, I bought It’s Hard to Find a Friend and (I’m only exaggerating a little) the course of my life was changed forever. Two things made me think of Pedro the Lion again recently, one was a tweet about the lead singer’s (David Bazan) birthday and the other was the start of the spring semester and the opportunity to catch up with a student of mine whose father happens to have been in the band. Anyway, here’s some classic Pedro…

Some Words to Read…

Fitz: You that thing of when you discover a book and you’re surprised you’d never read it before. I had that recently with Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. I was reading an op-ed in last Sunday’s New York Times that referenced the protagonist of Parable, a girl named Lauren Olamina who suffers from “hyperempathy;” she actually feels the pain of others. Between that fact, the Biblical reference in the title, the sci-fi element… I bought it immediately and dove right in. More on that soon!

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Thank you, as always, for reading.