Although I came of age at a time when politicians on both sides of the aisle were willing to listen to each other’s ideas, we are now at a juncture in which each side seems more or less unconvinced, immovable, at least in the important issues. The same is true for a substantial portion of the public. We are all rooted in our own media ecosystems, on different epistemological substrates, working with different interpretations of what we think.know-it’s true.

The 2020 election was stolen; It was not stolen. Immigrants are what make America great; Immigrants are the problem. Inflation is going down; Eggs cost too much. (They do costs too much(albeit for reasons that are probably not Joe Biden’s fault.) Abortion is an issue on which there can really be no compromise: this is the life we ​​are arguing about. Life! What could be more fundamental than that?

I could go on.

And Democrats, just among themselves, are already arguing about why Tuesday night’s election turned out the way it did. How I hate this part, the whole gladiatorial chaos within the party: racism was the main cause. Misogyny was the main cause. The intense alienation and demoralization of the white working class, that’s what killed them: not only did they see them lose their jobs, but they were also told they were bad people when the words white supremacy It entered the liberal lexicon, the mainstream media, and the vocabulary of many progressive politicians. All the talk about trans rights hurt them: why do Democrats talk about gender-affirming care (and use that phrase) when parents have legitimate anxieties about their 18-year-old kids wanting top surgery? “Defund the police” killed them, don’t many people in dodgy or dangerous neighborhoods? want police? Elon Musk and Joe Rogan were the problem. The cultural conservatism of Hispanics was the problem. The problem was not recognizing illegal immigration, inflation and crime. Joe Biden’s mental deterioration was the problem; The problem was that he hadn’t confessed it. The result was inevitable, because center-left parties are folding around the world like beach chairs. To infinity, to nausea.

Listen: Are we living in a different America?

So the question is: How do we move forward without venom, without looking at outsiders (and people within our own party) as potential enemies? As people who, if given their opinion, would undo the American project and destroy its values ​​and make this country deeply unsafe? (Which, by the way, is something both sides believe.)

My answer would be something quite basic, but at least achievable: a step that the media can least attempt to take, that local leaders can partially achieve, but that we, as citizens, can more easily take ourselves: we can focus on our vulnerabilities. We can choose to speak and pass bills to continually address and emphasize the human difficulties that unite us. we all experience pain. we all have disabled relatives in our family who we care about. We all need friendship and cry relationships that have vanished. we all have cancer or some other illness that makes us face our own mortality. we get chronic diseases; Our bodies fail.

These five topics are exactly what I’ve written about since joining The Atlantic in 2021. Suddenly, when I was 50 years old, I found myself unconsciously drifting towards existential issues, because they began to appear like smoke. What gives meaning to life is what matters to me now. Yeah No Now, in the last moments of life, then when?

And we share many other common struggles. Concerns about our children, if we have them. The evidence of care for the elderly. The comforts of religion, if you are religious, or the values, belief systems and structures that guide you, if you are not. We all want love. We all want fulfillment. All married people know how difficult marriage is, if they are in one, and divorced people know how difficult divorce is, if they are in the middle of it.

Most people instinctively gravitate toward these topics.

Last year, I wrote about my intellectually disabled aunt, who had the catastrophic misfortune of being institutionalized in 1953, when she was not yet 2 years old. Along the way, I met a woman, Grace Feist, whose son had the same condition but the good fortune of being born. More than 60 years later and, therefore, he was leading a much better life, a good life. Times had changed, sure, but her mother was a roaring outboard motor of determination when it came to supporting her daughter, learning sign language, and building what amounted to a Montessori school in her own home.

She was a devout Christian who told me repeatedly how much she loved God; I think of the universe as a multi-dimensional expanse of indifference the size of a big explosion. However, I have a psychotic attachment to her. In fact, I fell in love instantly: she’s warm, generous, funny, and likes silver flip-flops even when it’s 20 degrees out, because she’s used to the cold, having spent years freezing her butt off working security in an oil field. in North Dakota, where he was able to see the northern lights.

When we started talking politics, she mentioned that she had voted for Trump in 2020. I didn’t. But his reaction, almost immediately, was to tell me that he thought Republicans had lost their minds on masks. Was it so important to use one? Actually?-and that she always carried one, because her youngest son had immunological problems. And I responded by telling her that I thought Democratic policy positions on trans issues were excessive and ignored the legitimate concerns of parents, who didn’t want their teens to make hasty, irreversible decisions about their bodies when other factors could often be at play. . (To my fellow Democrats: Yes, there are kids who absolutely know they are trans; I think about Jan Morris(who realized this at age 3 or 4 while sitting under a piano, but I worry about teenagers who suddenly come to the same conclusion when they never felt that way before).

Read: How Trump neutralized his abortion problem

Our impulse was to find consensus. Most people’s ideas about politics are quite nuanced.

And that assumes that, first of all, they are thinking about politics. Many people (27 percent, according to a 2023 Gallup poll) simply don’t give a shit. (And 41 percent follow national political news only “somewhat closely.”) It is not part of your way of thinking in your everyday life. Grace and her husband, a charming and quiet boy named Jerry, are much more concerned with other matters. I told them I had just written a history on Steve Bannon, the only substantial article I have written on planet Trump; No one had heard of the boy.

Grace and I were bonded for life, despite our differences. His son, my aunt, our love and our painful concern for both of them were much deeper connections. And yes, I know: how silly and Pollyannaish. Liberals will probably say: we have work to do. Trump is dangerous. We are teetering on the brink of catastrophe, if we have not already fallen back to the brink of the abyss. And yes, I agree. Us do I have work to do; us ought be terrified; We should be mourning the country that was. But more than half the country doesn’t feel that way. And focusing on the shared things, the very basic things, is the only thing that is under our control. They are real. They matter. They are the stuff of life.