IT’S NOT ABOUT UNITY. NOT YET.

On my 31 mile bike ride this morning, it occurred to me: The goal of the Biden administration should not be unity. Not by any of stretch of the imagination.

Hear me out.

A recent poll indicated that close to 80% of the Republican Party believes the election was fraudulent and stolen from tRump. We’re not dealing with rational people here. So there’s no one to unify with. You cannot unify with irrational folks.

You can’t have unity when many on the other side still believe in conspiracies of one type or another. You cannot unify with folks who have a different value set and different operational beliefs than you do. Especially if those values and beliefs are diametrically opposed to your own.

Or with people who are unwilling to be at least a bit logical and rational.

And then there is this…how can you expect to have healing and unity without having accountability and justice? Asking for a friend.

Instead, the goal should be to immediately engage in all of the pent-up actions and activities that would make Americans individually, collectively, nationally, and internationally healthier in all kinds of ways, across all kinds of dimensions.

The best we’ll be able to do is see if some of that 80% want to join us in building a nation where all Americans can thrive. If they look over here and see all the betterment work going on and folks passionate, engaged, working together, building meaningful ‘stuff’, maybe some of them will wonder across the way and come and join in.

I don’t believe for a minute that the 75 million folks who supported a president with a shit-ton of problems associated with him…necessarily have all those same problems associated with them. Some? Yes. Most definitely! All. No freakin’ way!

Some were just looking for aplace were somebody cared about how their lives weren’t working anymore when they lived.

Or do they still want to put all of their energy into believing in and supporting the creation of a fascist state. Run by a strong man or one family. A state not based on democratic principles. A state that looks backwards, not forward.

If they do, they should know that the rest of us will fight them hammer and tong for the rest of our days if necessary.

The American experiment in democracy has never been perfect. Our great grandparents got it to change some, our grandparents more, our parents a lot more, but now it’s up to us to continue the experiment. Continue changing ourselves and the nation for the better.

Surely they and we can have some conscious conversations and come to some agreements as to what better means for us, for them, for all of us.

They can join us in that or fight us. They get to choose.

If they choose to fight, then the best practice will be to treat them like you’d treat a virus…understand it, isolate it, and inoculate against it.