PS: Three Further Reflections on "Pluralism in the Trump Era"

Convening with nearly 200 dedicated pluralists sparked some additional riffs on last week's post.

I wrote my prior newsletter on “Pluralism in the Trump Era” to gather my thoughts – not only amid all the upheaval of the new Administration, but also in advance of a conference on “Pluralism in Action” I attended late last week. It brought together nearly 200 pluralists who are working through how best to proceed in the current charged moment.

After a day and half of comparing notes and discussing plans with those assembled, my notebook was brimming with ideas. Let me recap the three that I starred and underscored most often in my subsequent efforts to make sense of what I heard and observed at the conference. (We used the Chatham House Rule, which bars me from attributing the ideas to the people who shared them, but they know who they are!)

1) Ultimately, the choice is pluralism or war.

Pluralism is often seen as something akin to getting a new puppy or baking your own bread — i.e., appealing and good to do for those who may have that particular taste, but certainly neither required nor meant for everyone. And in hard times like those we face at present, pluralism can feel like a distraction from — or even worse, a moderation of — the fights that the realists in our midst insist we need to be having.

Actually, if you believe in liberal democracy, especially in its multi-racial or multi-creedal permutations, pluralism is not optional. You either have it, and cultivate the civic culture needed to sustain it, or sooner or later you end up in depths marked by political violence or civil war. As one bracing panelist pointed out, historically, that is the choice that diverse and divided societies like ours face in the end: pluralism or war.

Far from being an idealistic or naive outlook, pluralism is well-suited and indeed essential for a diverse liberal democracy in dark times. As I noted last summer in “Taking Democracy for Granted,”

“Pluralism properly understood is profoundly realistic, grounded in a recognition of the fundamental differences in values and beliefs that inevitably separate people, not least American citizens, from each other. Pluralism flinches neither from the necessity nor the difficulty of reconciling these differences in ways that allow a disputatious people to live peaceably together and ward off tyranny….Rather than glossing over fundamental differences of principle, pluralism pushes us to choose between and among them where we can, balance them where we must, then take responsibility for our choices. There is nothing about pluralism that prevents us from taking moral stances. But we are also obliged to recognize that others in the political community can reasonably and invariably will assume different stances; ours will not necessarily trump theirs. The resulting impasse is where the hard work of politics in a liberal democracy begins.

2) Political resistance and civic renewal are different tasks.

Civil society actors focused on democracy, pluralism, and civic life face a challenge: the mounting tensions and contradictions between near term resistance to authoritarian gambits and the longer term push for civic renewal. The former work is national and urgent, driven by the strong passions of anger, fear, and loss aversion. The later work is local and important but not urgent. Indeed, a sense of urgency and strong passions prompted by events in Washington, DC are apt to set civic renewal back. They undermine the development of relationships, social trust, mutual accommodation, and shared problem solving in local contexts that renewal requires.

Many of the networks and affiliate groups in the broader democracy field presume they must support both resistance and renewal work, and hold space for the different sets of people and organizations undertaking it. I have come to believe that this is not possible. The urgency and passions inherent in political resistance swamp and subordinate the civic renewal that needs to be done over the longer run in a softer key. At last week’s conference, a thoughtful leader of a promising civic renewal effort said out loud that these are two separate tasks. Reading the body language in the room, most people appeared not to agree with him. I do.

If if seems I am drawing the distinction between political resistance and civic renewal too starkly, it is to counteract the prevailing tendency to gloss over and diminish it.

That said, there are some instances where the work of civic renewal might support resistance without being subsumed or distorted by it. For example, a community organizer at the conference who works with religious groups told me of one such approach. Members of congregations he supports have realized that some of their brothers and sisters are vulnerable to the reinvigorated enforcement of immigration laws. They have decided that anyone who has to go to an immigration hearing will be accompanied by another member of their church, both to be a witness and serve as a source of strength for them. “Nobody goes alone” is their mantra. This will help build community and solidarity, keep the federal agents more accountable, and raise awareness of the effects of the Administration’s harder line policies.

I can also see the the work of resistance and civic renewal potentially being combined in granular, bottom-up, locally-attuned political organizing in more conservative and purple places and districts. This is what enabled Democrats to take back the House of Representatives in 2018, rebooting the resistance to an unbound executive in the institution where it is most efficacious, i.e., Congress. But national resistance groups and their funders cannot readily contribute to this push. Indeed, they tend to get in the way of it. (If you'd like to learn more about these dynamics, read Theda Skocpol’s recent short post here and her deeper dives with co-authors Caroline Tervo and Lara Putnam.) I note the nuances of these two exceptions because they prove the rule.

3) Maybe we shouldn’t think of “Pluralism” as a field after all!

A wise friend with deep global experience in helping create the peace building field offered this provocation: don’t call pluralism a field. This really hit home, not least because I was part of the team that first introduced pluralism as a term of art to capture and convey what we were doing. Our provocateur noted that, based on her experience, as soon as you call something a field, you start to adopt insider jargon and pre-occupations, work to include some actors and exclude others, and become vulnerable to the blindspots and biases that take root in a like-minded group.

Instead, she proposed that we consider unbundling the field of pluralism. I envisioned what she was talking about as a more loosely held network of networks. The interlaced elements would form a constellation of different people and groups supporting the work of bridging, belonging, welcoming, peace building, interfaith dialogue, social cohesion, national service, local journalism, community organizing, story telling, civil discourse, civic education, citizens’ assemblies, etc.

This network of networks would be highly permeable and include more people and associations who practice pluralism in different ways, toward different ends. It would encompass a much larger set of potential allies and fewer assumed enemies. Paradoxically, by envisioning pluralism not as a field but as a way of being in the world, we might increase our influence and extend more compelling invitations for others to join us. Put differently, maybe it is time to pluralize pluralism!