We Can't Unify With This
It's true that Trump is not in office any longer, and that is good.
It's also true that Trump was always a symptom, and that Biden being in office isn't going to save us, despite the desperate yearning so many have for this to be the case.
Tucker Carlson is still on TV, on one of the highest rated cable channels. He is extremely popular with conservative America. Last night, Tucker ran an entire segment, defending a "conservative journalist who is being unfairly attacked by the left." At the bottom of this piece are examples of what this "journalist" has been putting out for years. He's also been charged with election interference. I've put them there because they are blatantly anti-Semitic, and even as insuring they pop up in the thumbnails is probably a recipe for more clicks, I'd rather anyone reading this have the choice about whether or not they want to see them.
The default is going to be for the Tucker fans to defend him, somehow. At best, what they'll respond with is, "He must not have known this guy put this out" or more likely, "Fake news. Everyone you don't like is a racist, right? Those aren't even real."
This is why, when calls for "unity" are made, a whole lot of us respond with both confusion and anger.
Trump is gone, but it's obviously not over. It probably threatens the continued stability of the nation, it's true. I'm not trying to live in a nation where the requirement for stability is that we all just kind of shrug at the empowerment and proselytizing of ideologies which have produced humanities most horrific acts. Unlike what many people obviously believe, I don't believe "We're American and so exceptional, nothing like that could happen here," because we've done some of humanity's most horrible things, and we can again. We're doing things today which future generations will look at with the same disgust and derision we look at slavery and genocide against indigenous people.
This isn't some fringe thing we have to accept is always going to be have some small number of devotees on the farthest edges of the margins of society. This is people in Congress, and obviously, people with extremely successful shows on cable news stations carried by every cable provider in the country. They'll claim ignorance or persecution when it comes to light that these are their beliefs or the beliefs of people they support and defend, guaranteed. Loeffler was in Congress, after it being revealed she was in a bunch of photos with some of the most prominent members of the white supremacist/nationalist movements. Not just one or two photos, but repeatedly. Not just from some meet and greet with handshakes and photos for anyone willing to wait in line either. Some of those photos came from the kind of exclusive fundraisers someone gave those unrepentant, dedicated racists an invite. Marjorie Taylor Greene is in Congress. Ted Cruz is a Senator. Josh Hawley is a Senator. Fox News is a whole ass channel, 24/7.
When the calls for unity are coming out, what we're being asked to do is to unify with the people who make this a reality. You may believe that Carlson, Cruz, Hawley, and Taylor Greene are just "playing to the base, and don't believe any of this nonsense" which is the excuse we've seen for a long time now, but what you're asking us to do is unify with the people, who by that reasoning, require these people run interference and give political cover to ideologies which have caused more violence and suffering in our country and others, than possibly any other.
If I'm going to have to live in that country, where we have to unify with the people who will promote, believe or defend these things, I'd rather it be because we lost the war to prevent that from being the case than I would continue to live where some of us get to be comfortable enough to treat these things as an inconvenient, impolite and as offensive to our national vanity, but inconsequential, because we're genuinely ignorant enough to believe the ascension of these belief systems doesn't threaten our safety and security the way it does, "those people." Contrary to the way this is often presented, both of those options end in mass misery and devastation, because the people with these ideologies don't ever come to a balanced sense of unity, it's the entire purpose of these ideologies to subjugate or wipe out anyone and everyone who doesn't hold their beliefs. It's not a question of whether we can tolerate existing next to them, it's a question of whether we're going to attempt to prevent them from having enough access to institutional power to use those institutions to act on those beliefs.
Those who want "unity" have to realize this has to stop before there is going to be anything like unity. The Lauren Boebert's, Josh Hawley's, Ted Cruz's, Tucker Carlson's, Rush Limbaugh's, and Sean Hannity's of the world have to stop being empowered by the people the rest of are being asked to unify with, and it's not because we "disagree." It's because they're giving power to and defending the purveyors of these hateful ideologies, and they always have. Anti-Semitism, racism, xenopobia, sexism... These aren't politics we disagree about. They are dehumanization which create suffering, death, pain and chaos at magnitudes we need to have entire fields of study just to attempt to measure.
If the solution you have for this boils down to, "there is no way to get the conservative movement to turn around from this if we don't show them they are redeemable and we have to work on our neighbors, relatives and, [God forbid] our friends," I will tell you this is not a "we" project. It's not a project for the people who've spent the last five years or decade or two decades trying to sound the alarm about the rise of extremism. It's not a project for people who have put effort, time and resources into preventing us from getting to exactly where we are today, and it's most definitely not the job of people who have been victimized or traumatized by the violence which has resulted from the majority of the country not taking this seriously, and gaslighting those who have taken it seriously, been effected by it or have tried to bring more attention to and inspire genuine action for preventing this mass radicalization. This is the amends the country can begin to make to the people who have been victimized and traumatized, start taking it seriously, and if you genuinely believe the answer is in finding a way to communicate with the people in your life who have participated in giving these elements the enormous amount of power they now have, you should start. You can not require that of the people who have been harmed by the relative inaction and willful ignorance of the rest of the country.