Joe Biden constructed his 2020 presidential marketing campaign round the concept “we’re in a battle for the soul of America.” I believed it was a wonderful slogan as a result of it captured the concept we’re in the midst of an ethical wrestle over who we’re as a nation. Within the video he launched this week launching his re-election bid, he doubled down on that concept: We’re nonetheless, he stated, “in a battle for the soul of America.”
I wish to dwell on the little phrase “soul” in that sentence as a result of I believe it illuminates what the 2024 presidential election is all about.
What’s a soul? Properly, spiritual individuals have one reply to that query. However Biden just isn’t utilizing the phrase in a spiritual sense, however in a secular one. He’s saying that individuals and nations have an ethical essence, a soul.
Whether or not you consider in God or don’t consider in God just isn’t my division. However I do ask you to consider that each individual you meet has this ethical essence, this high quality of soul.
As a result of people have souls, every one is of infinite worth and dignity. As a result of people have souls, every one is the same as all of the others. We aren’t equal in bodily power or I.Q. or internet price, however we’re radically equal on the degree of who we basically are.
The soul is the identify we may give to that a part of our consciousness the place ethical life takes place. The soul is the place our ethical sentiments move from, the feelings that make us really feel admiration on the sight of generosity and disgust on the sight of cruelty.
It’s the place the place our ethical yearnings come from, too. Most individuals yearn to steer good lives. After they act with a spirit of cooperation, their souls sing and they’re completely happy. However, once they really feel their lives haven’t any ethical goal, they expertise a illness of the soul — a way of lostness, ache and self-contempt.
As a result of we have now souls, we’re morally accountable for what we do. Hawks and cobras should not morally accountable for their actions; however people, possessors of souls, are caught in an ethical drama, both doing good or doing ailing.
Political campaigns should not often contests over the standing of the soul. However Donald Trump, and Trumpism usually, is the embodiment of an ethos that covers up the soul. Or to be extra exact, every is an ethos that deadens the soul underneath the reign of the ego.
Trump, and Trumpism usually, represents a form of nihilism that you simply would possibly name amoral realism. This ethos is constructed round the concept we stay in a dog-eat-dog world. The sturdy do what they’ll and the weak endure what they need to. May makes proper. I’m justified in grabbing all that I can as a result of if I don’t, the opposite man will. Persons are egocentric; take care of it.
This ethos — which is central to not solely Trump’s lifestyle, but in addition Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s — offers individuals a permission slip to be egocentric. In an amoral world, cruelty, dishonesty, vainglory and conceitedness are valorized as survival abilities.
Individuals who stay in response to the code of amoral realism tear via codes and customs which have constructed over the centuries to nurture goodness and foster cooperation. Putin just isn’t restrained by notions of human rights. Trump just isn’t restrained by the traditional codes of honesty.
Within the thoughts of an amoral realist, life just isn’t an ethical drama; it’s a contest for energy and achieve, pink in tooth and claw. Different individuals are not possessors of souls, of infinite dignity and value; they’re objects to be utilized.
Biden talks rather a lot concerning the wrestle between democracy and authoritarianism. At its deepest degree, that wrestle is between techniques that put the dignity of particular person souls on the middle and techniques that function by the logic of dominance and submission.
Chances are you’ll disagree with Biden on many points. Chances are you’ll assume he’s too outdated. However that’s not the first problem on this election. The presidency, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “is pre-eminently a spot of ethical management.”
One of many hardest, soul-wearying elements of residing via the Trump presidency was that we needed to endure a gentle downpour of lies, transgressions and demoralizing conduct. We have been all corroded by it. That period was a reminder that the soul of an individual and the soul of a nation are at all times in flux, daily shifting a bit within the path of elevation or a bit within the path of degradation.
A return to that ethos would convey a couple of social and ethical disintegration that’s onerous to ponder. Say what you’ll about Biden, however he has usually put human dignity on the middle of his political imaginative and prescient. He treats individuals with charity and respect.
The competition between Biden and Trumpism is much less Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative than it’s between an basically ethical imaginative and prescient and an basically amoral one, a contest between decency and its reverse.
