If there was ever a time in our modern history to mobilize the idea and reality of America, and to mobilize Americans, it is now.
| Guest columnist
Residents of Springfield, Ohio on Trump’s victory in the 2024 election
Residents of a city previously at the center of the national spotlight are responding to America’s new political reality.
Vincent Jungkunz is an associate professor of political science at Ohio University.
Although my father was mayor of our small town in Ohio for only one term, he never really stopped being a politician.
For him, being a politician meant being someone who wanted to contribute to a better world.
He has never met a stranger.
My father talked to everyone and taught everyone with a basic level of respect and dignity.
When he was at the post office or the grocery store, whether asked about a stop sign, a street light, or the town’s finances, my father would talk and listen until the person he was talking to seemed satisfied with his answers, even if they disagreed with him, everyone deserved human involvement.
Our political opponents are not enemies or demons
Political scientist Murray Edelman discussed the difference between “opponents” and “enemies.”
Opponents are those we disagree with, and yet even though we would probably choose very different policies, at the end of the day we could share a meal or enjoy a beer over a conversation about our lives.
‘Enemies’ are very different, and the consequences of seeing each other as enemies are completely different. Enemies are not only those with whom we disagree, but enemies are also those with whom we cannot live together.
Donald Trump recently called Democrats “demonic.”
That is an example of defining people who should be political opponents as irredeemable enemies.
America Must Return to Our ‘Aspirational Values’
My father did not see people as enemies, and he believed deeply in an America where, as Kamala Harris has reminded us, we have more in common than what sets us apart. The outcome of this election certainly calls into question the very possibility of her call for unity, which could deter many of us from even attempting unity.
That’s all the more reason we need to regroup; speaking proactively and intentionally about our commonalities as Americans; and together form a New America.
Our “aspirational values” define what and who it means to be American. This must be our basis for the future. The Declaration of Independence lays the foundation:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of those governed.”
To be American we cherish freedom, equal opportunity, democracy, individualism, individuality, hard work, honesty, respect, dignity, consent-based authority, decency and freedom. As we all know, many people have been excluded from these values since the beginning of the country.
The invention of “races,” of “white” and “black,” meant that our institutions, the protections of our laws and rights in our Constitution were completely inaccessible to First Nations and Black Americans held in slavery.
In some ways, the devastatingly stark contrast between a country founded on equality and freedom and so steeped in the inhumanity of slavery was ever-present. Black Americans like Frederick Douglass fought for their freedom and worked to dismantle the false narratives of a hierarchy of human worth through our aspirational values. He moved the needle towards freedom.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the Declaration of feelings and resolutions, where she brought the injustices of American patriarchy to public consciousness. She moved the needle towards freedom.
And all the while, ordinary people were having conversations about these enormous moral failings of our nation.
Some started talking about how we could close the gap between our aspirational values and our reality as a nation. As the nation’s aspirational values became more widely accessible to those once denied, our identity as Americans became increasingly unified around the core ideals that define us as a nation, creating the American Dream.
Trump has built a platform to demean and humiliate those he views as enemies
Donald Trump does not believe in our aspirational values and ideals, and he wants you to devalue the very ideals that made us Americans.
If there was ever a time in our modern history to mobilize the idea and reality of America, and to mobilize Americans, it is now. Donald Trump has sold his supporters on the impossibility of a better life with him by demeaning, denigrating, ridiculing, attacking and demonizing those he constructs as enemies.
The time is now for us to challenge Trumpism directly through our institutions, our work, our families and, above all, our culture of a New America, and restore and express our aspirational values, our rights to life, liberty and happiness for all to expand.
We may be adversaries from time to time, but we must always reject the politics of defining other people as enemies, because politics that construct our neighbors as enemies are beneath us.
It is not worthy of the aspirational values that have already made America great.
Vincent Jungkunz is an associate professor of political science at Ohio University. He teaches a wide range of courses on the politics of race, democratic theory, political theory, and American politics. He is also the leader of the Culture of Health Leadership Institute for Racial Healing.