“A house divided against itself cannot stand”, this biblical wisdom quoted by Abraham Lincoln in the middle of the 19th century, is once again becoming relevant in America of the 21st century.
We take Joe Biden’s November victory as a chance for the United States to return to normalcy.
But if the Democratic president is able to deal with the shaken American institutions, then the question of what to do with the split in American society remains open.
Ironically, all this is painfully familiar to Ukraine. Our own society, watching the political upheavals in the United States, remains divided by last year’s presidential campaign.
And Biden’s rhetoric, addressed to Donald Trump’s voters – “we are not enemies, we are Americans” – brings to mind the fruitless speeches of the victorious Zelensky about the unification of the country.
Someone will be outraged by such a parallel. Is it really possible to compare the sixth president of Ukraine with the forty-sixth president of the United States?!
Zelensky is a clown, an amateur, a nonentity without experience, without a program, without a real team. And Biden is a bison of American politics, backed by no less competent associates. He will succeed!
Alas, this is the same logical trap that those who sympathized with Vladimir Zelensky fell into a year and a half ago.
Ze’s supporters, who enthusiastically talked about “stitching the country” together, looked at the new president with their own eyes – and not through the eyes of fellow citizens who felt they were defeated and humiliated.
Meanwhile, the real stitching of Ukraine directly depended on the thoughts and feelings of the losing side. And everything that the winners attributed to the virtues of the showman Zelensky – youth, detachment from the old politicum, equidistance from ideological extremes – did not at all paint him in the perception of the vanquished.
Any of Biden’s merits – respectability, prudence, years of political experience – are not merits in the perception of the losing part of society.
That very different America that the 46th president needs to reach out if he intends to overcome the national division.
Note that, in comparison with the American post-electoral discord, the Ukrainian one looks like a light version.
Our winner did not win the election with a minimal advantage, and our loser did not claim massive fraud. No one doubted the outcome of the presidential race.
Nonetheless, the psychological trauma caused by the 2019 elections still divides Ukrainians.
Both in Ukraine and in the United States, the struggle for the presidency was accompanied by a purposeful emotional rocking of the country.
Both we and they staked on the polarization of public opinion. Moreover, in both cases, an aggressive campaign was not enough to re-elect the incumbent – but quite enough to demonize his successor.
Even being elected with a huge margin, President Ze turned out to be illegitimate for a noticeable stratum of compatriots.
In the eyes of thousands of active citizens who supported Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskiy became more than just a bad government leader. For the most irreconcilable, he is not the head of state at all: he is a hostile impostor who has no place on Bankova.
The percentage of militant Trumpists in American society is much higher, and Biden’s illegitimacy in their eyes risks being even higher.
Restless Donald Trump will try to maintain this belief over the next four years. And it will no longer be possible to neutralize it with rational arguments.
The specter of an imaginary election rigging will exacerbate all invectives against the Democratic Party and personally Joe Biden.
Accusations of Bolshevism and the destruction of American foundations will play with renewed vigor. Reasoning about the transformation of the United States into a new USSR. Stories of being imprisoned in a digital concentration camp under the guise of fighting the coronavirus.
Fantasies about a secret network of pedophiles, covered by the democratic establishment and not finished off by the fearless President Trump …
A set of anti-Biden and anti-democratic clichés may seem overly grotesque and absurd. But let’s remember what was written in our own social networks after the first round of the presidential elections:
“All office plankton will be taken to Siberia. Pence and everyone who is sitting on subsidies, and families with more than 2 children – all will be resettled to Siberia and the Far East. Beforehand, everyone will be given racial passports and deprived of Ukrainian citizenship.”
Hot nonsense, passed off as insider information, collected thousands of likes and reposts. Moreover, it was approved and disseminated by people who considered themselves the most sane and advanced part of Ukrainian society.
So is it worth hoping that Trump’s supporters will be more discerning – and will take President Biden’s arrival more or less calmly? The question is rhetorical.
For all the miscalculations and failures of President Ze, he did not cross the very red lines that his haters announced in the spring of 2019. There was no surrender to Moscow, no rejection of European integration, no revolution in historical or linguistic politics.
But did this soften the citizens who initially saw Zelensky as an enemy henchman? Of course not. Any statement of the unlucky guarantor continues to be dissected for national betrayal.
So, almost the main sin of Ze is the meme “what’s the difference”: although these words were not followed by a revision of the humanitarian course of the late Poroshenko era.
Of course, Joe Biden is not Vova Zelensky. But the advantages of a mature politician over a helpless dilettante are unlikely to help overcome the split: they will rather worsen the situation.
Unlike Ze, the US President-elect does have a program to be carried out. He has certain ideological attitudes that cannot be sacrificed. He will pursue his own political course that runs counter to the convictions of the Trumpists.
And if the rejected Zelenskiy is hated mainly for his words, then the rejected Biden will also be hated for his deeds.
A divided America can be compared for a long time with a divided Ukraine, to find similarities and differences. But one circumstance is especially important for us: the domestic and overseas split has a common beneficiary.
For Moscow, the personality of the Ukrainian president matters. And even more so for the Kremlin, the figure of the American leader is significant. But the internal strife in the former colony and in the largest Western democracy means even more to the Russian Federation than the names of the inhabitants of Bankova Avenue or Pennsylvania Avenue.
For a house divided within itself cannot stand.
pravda