Us and them: public discourse in America

Dr. Abdullah bin Musa Al Tayer

The Democratic and Republican parties in the United States of America wish that either could strongly influence or even control the public narrative, suppressing dissenting opinion until the election is over.

These wishes are a kind of fantasy in a country that has reached maturity like the United States of America, and enables opinion and dissenting opinion to coexist and impose diversity in political discourse in a way that serves the orientations and ideologies of the two ruling parties. Wishes may come true in an emerging country that is making its way towards development and prosperity, as happened with Singapore at the beginning of its renaissance, where the Singaporean government at that time gave priority to the discourse that strengthened national unity, economic development and social stability, as a young nation feeling its way towards the future and suffering existential challenges, including These include ethnic tensions, economic backwardness, and external security threats.

For the father of the Singaporean Renaissance, a unified narrative was the only way to move society as a single bloc behind his plans to build an advanced nation in all fields. The circumstance necessitated controlling the media and thus imposing the government’s vision and narrative. In order not to be unfair to the pioneer of the renaissance in Singapore, it is fair to recall that he left room to hear the views of civil society organizations and academics, and listened to differing viewpoints within his government.

Some might argue that, having reached its peak, whether that approach was necessary for Singapore’s success is debatable, as alternative paths would also likely have yielded positive results. These assumptions are revealed by the state of satisfaction that followed the completion of construction and overcoming the challenges that required the unity of Singapore behind the builder of its modern renaissance.

Singapore’s approach to controlling the public narrative contributed to its early success, and researchers have later evaluated the nuances and potential downsides of that strategy.

Returning to America, the country that chose civil war for its advancement, unlike Singapore, the conflict of post-war narratives seems like eternal bliss compared to the bloody conflict, and Republicans and Democrats realize that the only way to prevent sliding into civil war is to maintain a calculated connection between the two sides of the conservative and liberal dichotomy in America. .

From this standpoint, each of them adheres to its own discourse, and the principle of clear sorting dominates the public space. Fox News and CNN cannot be viewed outside the context of us and them.

American entrepreneurs, executives, judiciaries, and citizens realize that when one narrative dominates, it will inevitably oppress nearly half of American society, and will hinder critical thinking, innovation, and the ability to effectively confront challenges. These are traits that America has developed since the end of the American War, and that have become the foundations of its industrial renaissance, economic progress, and leadership. World order. Therefore, they are patient or pretend to be unavoidable in order to avoid increasing polarization and ideological division, undermining social cohesion and increasing the risk of unrest or conflicts leading to civil war, which is still present in American memory and has its own path in contemporary consciousness.

Americans who are accustomed to accepting one narrative without questioning it, whether on the Republican or Democratic side, are more vulnerable to electoral manipulation and misinformation campaigns because they are with the party’s candidate, and no one will budge on their positions. They are polarized to the left or the right, but one group sits quietly in the middle. To these and not to those, and they are the independent voters spread across a number of so-called swing states, and they are the ones who decide who reaches the White House.

Some sources say that independent voters constituted 31% in the 2022 midterm elections, and 26% of the votes in the 2020 presidential race. Reuters describes in a report that independent voters are younger than Republicans and Democrats who are firmly established in their political beliefs, and that 26% of independents are part of the generation called (Z), and the majority was not old enough to vote in the 2020 elections, and that 36% are from the millennial generation. .

President Biden has previously praised the Chinese political approach, where the president makes his decisions without partisan disturbances, and former President Trump is fond of hegemony, and wants to see America fully embrace his red narrative at the expense of the blue spectrum, but any of the American politicians has no choice but to coexist with The diversity of the narrative, which sometimes reaches the point of extremism and strangeness in the literature of groups such as the extreme right-wing QAnon.

The model of the rising Singapore at that time does not come close at all to the experience of an American nation whose renaissance began early and saw peaceful differences in viewpoints as a great mercy and a basis for its development and renaissance.