Perspective: Building bridges after a divided election

The results are in. Some find them shocking. Others find them liberating. Some mourn. Some celebrate.
After the wave of personal emotions abates, we may find ourselves scratching our heads. What just happened, what have we missed, what is this telling us, what do we do now?
My chosen candidate did not prevail, and I am gutted. I worry about existential threats to our country as we work out what it looks like to be all-in together. But when I get to the edge of my anger and lift my head from my grief, I see all the others, those who were presumably on my side and on the other. They are also worried, scared and angry. They are also ready for change.
I am taking this as an invitation to set down the heavy weight of contempt and choose curiosity.
Any cursory look at the exit polls reveals something that may be surprising: this was not a monolithic “us versus them” election. Yes, there are significant divides across gender, race, economic class and ethnicity; but not in totality.
The United States is the most racially and religiously diverse nation in human history. The incredibly close presidential race reflected that reality. Both sides were made up of a diverse (in every way possible) coalition of supporters.
We’re still bitterly divided. The election was still incredibly close.
But something feels like it’s shifted, and you can see it in who and how they voted.
We voted differently than people with whom we worship or work. We voted differently than other families on our kids’ soccer teams. We live across the street from neighbors with the other candidate’s sign in their yard. We, the myriad and the many, voted differently. And we are still living our life together. Our beautiful, somewhat broken, diverse democracy marches on.
Elections have clear results with a winner and a loser. And who wins will govern with consequential policies. But democracy itself? This sacred idea we live out neighbor to neighbor every day in a myriad of ways — big and small, public and private, through our diverse institutions and places of work, worship and belonging? There should be no losers. Democracy is not a zero-sum game. It’s an all-in, all-of-us kind of pageant.
We’ve been sold a bill of goods that we’re more divided than ever, that somehow, someway, we are heading towards a second Civil War. I don’t believe it, and it doesn’t have to be the outcome.
We can also choose a different story. What would it look like if we put down our phones, turned off social media (increasingly manipulated by out-of-control algorithms that feed off our human nature to fight or flee) and reached out to our neighbors in ordinary ways to build bridges?
That would be profound and, perhaps, even patriotic.
I’m not suggesting that we water down what we believe. I don’t plan to. I am suggesting we put down our suspicions of one another, try to set aside blame, and choose instead to reach out with an open hand of curiosity.
The great French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, writing letters from America back to his divided home country 180 some years ago, said the work of democracy wasn’t easy and at times not very efficient. “Democracy does not give the people the most skillful government, but it produces what the ablest governments scarcely ever succeed in producing, namely, an all-pervading and restless activity.”
Perhaps it’s time to renew these old but durable and true sentiments. All-pervading and restless activities don’t have to be divisive, nor should they ever be destructive. How might we find ordinary, everyday ways of belief and belonging in this country, neighbor to neighbor, precinct to precinct, state to state?
In the aftermath of a terribly bitter, divided election, I still believe in “We the People,” the myriad and the many knit together patchwork-style day in and day out determined to self rule. Not bound to any one person or party.
The season ahead requires much of each of us. For me, I’ll play my part building bridges, not burning them or blaming those on any side of the divide. I’m going to try my very best to live out that red, white and blue hope, for a land and story for each of us, the one and the many.
Adam Nicholas Phillips is the chief strategy officer of Interfaith America, an ordained Christian minister and a former Biden-Harris official.