Americans need to get over political hard feelings and confront hard enemies abroad

In 2016, America’s cultural and political animosities, which had been building for years, took on a particularly hard edge. The presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made reciprocal charges of election fraud and voter suppression. 

Trump, expecting defeat, talked of a rigged election until he won. Clinton still questioned its legitimacy 10 months after her loss, but saw no legal mechanism to challenge it.

Political feelings have only hardened in the years since, and the 2020 election saw Trump refusing ever to concede Joe Biden’s victory, culminating in his vengeful instigation of the violent mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

As it happened, 2016 was also the year the Avett Brothers released a recording of their song “No Hard Feelings.” It might have served as an antidote to the poisonous rancor and a salve to the deep wounds inflicted on families and friendships during the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. Perhaps it could finally play that role in this midterm election season and in preparation for 2024.

Accompanied by an achingly sweet and sad melody, the lyrics offer the solemn perspective that after all of today’s travails, death awaits us all.

“When my body won’t hold me anymore / And it finally lets me free / Will I be ready?

“When my feet won’t walk another mile / And my lips give their last kiss goodbye /Will my hands be steady?

“When I lay down my fears, my hopes, and my doubts / The rings on my fingers, and the keys to my house / With no hard feelings.”

How many friends and family members have given their “last kiss goodbye” without realizing at the time that political and social divisions would drive loved ones apart, some forever?

“When the sun hangs low in the West / And the light in my chest won’t be kept held at bay any longer

“When the jealousy fades away / And it’s ash and dust for cash and lust

“And it’s just hallelujah / And love in thought, love in the words / Love in the songs they sing in the church

“And no hard feelings.”

Love in the songs they sing in the church. How many churches today, on the right and on the left, are conveying messages that engender not love but condemnation of their fellow citizens with opposing political views as unworthy of tolerance and respect, some even fostering darker impulses?  

There is one church membership that did practice what it preached. The congregation of Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., the victim of a horrendous act of mass murder based on racial hatred, found it in their hearts to forgive and even express love for the evildoer.  

Yet, for too many Americans, forgiveness is not an option toward those who have made the “wrong” political choices. Hard feelings remain to poison and inflame the next election cycle.

The song goes on, “Lord knows, they haven’t done much good for anyone.” But Americans’ hard feelings toward each other have greatly benefited the nation’s real existential threats, the regimes that cultivate and exploit U.S. internal divisions. The more we focus on fighting each other, the less we pay attention to what our adversaries are doing to us, and to our friends and allies, and the less prepared we are to confront it. 

The lyrics end with the words, “I have no enemies.” It would be healthier for America’s democracy if those with different partisan leanings were seen less as existential threats and more as political rivals or competitors — the anodyne terms recent U.S. administrations have grown accustomed to calling America’s actual adversaries abroad.  

The United States does have mortal enemies — hostile nation-states and terrorist groups determined to undermine and destroy the values that residents of America’s red states and blue states hold dear and share in common. The war criminal who rules Russia, the genocidal leaders of China and North Korea, and the fanatical religious haters of Iran ridicule and relish America’s free and open system that provides so many opportunities for them to turn Americans against each other. And too many of our citizens fall into the disinformation trap.

While Americans are internally distracted by dire apocalyptic accusations against friends and neighbors, the evildoers of the world eagerly collude to exterminate the proud young democracy in Ukraine and plan to do the same to the democratic population of Taiwan. They score a double victory when they can spread  disinformation that not only divides Americans internally but weakens the ability of U.S. foreign policy to meet the menace from abroad.

That is at risk of happening now regarding U.S. support for Ukraine. A growing minority of Republican and Democratic members of Congress are expressing war-weariness and impatience with the financial costs to Americans, even though all the fighting and dying is being done by Ukrainians defending their democratic independence.   

The Biden administration, which for over a year failed to deter Russia’s aggression by convincing Vladimir Putin of the U.S. will to lead NATO in a vigorous defense of Ukraine, now appears to be succumbing to domestic and allied pressure for a premature political settlement of the conflict that would leave Russia occupying parts of Ukraine.  

The administration protests that it is meeting with Russian officials not to press Ukraine to make territorial concessions to Putin but to keep him from carrying out his threats of escalation, even to the point of using nuclear weapons. The danger in these discussions is that U.S. officials will become convinced the former is necessary to achieve the latter, thereby rewarding Putin’s aggression.

Things probably would not have come to this if the George W. Bush administration had blocked  Putin’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, despite having encouraged NATO to invite Georgia and Ukraine to apply for membership. Or, if the Barack Obama administration had rallied NATO to Ukraine’s defense in 2014 when Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, or if it had stopped Russia’s intervention in Syria on behalf of mass murderer Bashar al-Assad. Or, if the Trump and Biden administrations had, respectively, designed and implemented a sensible and responsible partial withdrawal from America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan.

Those mistakes of both parties, rather than serving as a basis for endless recrimination, should  provide lessons going forward that enable U.S. foreign policy to confront and defeat the true enemies of freedom.   

After they have spoken through their elections, Americans need to put domestic political differences in perspective and come together against common enemies, as much as possible with no hard feelings.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.