The picture featured above comes from an opinion column by Carlos Lozada, published in The New York Times on July 21, 2024. The main point of Lozada's column, as the picture makes clear, is that presidential candidate Donald J. Trump believes that our politics is best understood as a "fight." As I have noted in another one of my recent blog postings, this idea that "politics" is a "fight" can slip easily into the mistaken thought that the aim of of our politics - of our "democracy" - is actually "dictatorship."
In a "fight," after all, the idea is to "knock your opponent out." If you can do that, then you will be free to do whatever you want to do - what you think is "right."
My own idea of "politics" is rather different, and today's blog posting was actually stimulated not by the Lozada column but by another New York Times' article, published in that same, July 21, 2024, issue.
In her "Interview" in The New York Times Magazine," Lulu Garcia-Navarro spoke with Robert Putnam, an American political scientist, and the author, among other books and articles, of Bowling Alone. In that rather famous book, published originally as an essay, in 1995, Putnam argued that our nation has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences.
Structuring our politcs as a "fight" does not help us deal with this problem. To the contrary, it exacerbates it. Putnam's understanding of "social capital," the thing that is most needed to make our society function properly, is that there are actually two different "kinds" of social capital. Only one of them can help us overcome the social dysfunction that Putnam has documented.
I certainly encourage anyone reading this blog posting to read the entirety of the Putnam interview with Garcia-Navarro. It is titled, "Robert Putnam Knows Why You’re Lonely." However, even though I have provided you the link - and have actually done that two different times - it might well be that The Times' paywall will not let non-subscribers read that conversation between Putnam and Garcia-Navarro.
Given that possibility (probably verging on a certainty), I am providing you with the following excerpt, discussing those two different kinds of "social capital," so you will be able fully to understand Putnam's point:
I want to understand a little bit about the terms that you use for how you describe this. You distinguish between two types of social capital, right? There’s bonding social capital and there’s bridging social capital. Ties that link you to people like yourself are called bonding social capital. So, my ties to other elderly, male, white, Jewish professors — that’s my bonding social capital. And bridging social capital is your ties to people unlike yourself. So my ties to people of a different generation or a different gender or a different religion or a different politic or whatever, that’s my bridging social capital. I’m not saying “bridging good, bonding bad,” because if you get sick, the people who bring you chicken soup are likely to reflect your bonding social capital. But I am saying that in a diverse society like ours, we need a lot of bridging social capital. And some forms of bonding social capital are really awful. The K.K.K. is pure social capital — bonding social capital can be very useful, but it can also be extremely dangerous. So far, so good, except that bridging social capital is harder to build than bonding social capital. That’s the challenge, as I see it, of America today.
Gearing up for a "fight," politically, is definitely putting the emphasis on building "bonding social capital," and as Putnam notes, that can be "extremely dangerous."
What our former president is urging upon us - and there is no doubt about it - is "extremely dangerous." Look into Project 2025, if you haven't already investigated it, and if you need any convincing.
We are "in this together," and that is the truth of our political situation, and we're not talking about a boxing ring. Where our politics is concerned, we need to do the exact opposite of "fight to win." We are not supposed to be trying to knock out all those people who have different ideas. We are supposed to be trying to figure out how to live with them!
So, before you vote for the Trump-Vance ticket, consider the alternatives!
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