I don’t buy into messages of unity. The American left truly exemplifies why I think unity is bullshit …
You just spent 5 years demonizing Trump and all their supporters. You called them all sorts of names. You tacitly and explicitly supported rioting. You created a fake scandal (Russian collusion) to make sure to diminish the influence of half of the country. I don’t feel like making a long list, but I can go on for quite a while.
Now, I am seeing Biden and everyone on the left push a message of unity. Why? Because they have, in aggregate, more power and they want people to validate, support, and encourage it.
This is all the same script from the Bush years into the Obama years. The left abhorred Bush and the wars and were insanely divisive and undermining, than Obama came into power and you were supposed to support the president and killing brown people again.
This isn’t a post that should be viewed as Republican or right leaning. The American right and the Republican Party are cowards, they lack principles and their coalition is incoherent. However, this unity bullshit is a tactic most pushed by the left. They act as insufferable complainers and thugs when they don’t have power, then preach being an adult and having unity when they do.
This isn’t just in politics. “Unity” is usually a message to merely shut you up and to get you to go along with bullshit. It is a message of social intimidation. Once a person and/or their values can be justified in defining the group, they perpetuate their power by telling everyone that unity is doing what authority wants. It is perpetuated by those with power and dim people looking to merely get along, and is used to otherize dissent. It is used to make people look at dissenters as disunifiers and for people to make them outcasts.
If I was a shitty parent, I could do this with my kids. Every time they have a complaint, I could tell them they are disunifying the family. I could manipulate my children into doing what I want by psychologically twisting them to comply with my power by acting like it isn’t “my” power, but rather the will of the family (expressed through me). I could use “unity” to tacitly shame them and to isolate them into manipulating them to follow whatever I wanted. This is a tactic used in every cult.
Unity isn’t a value in itself. It is only of value when it emerges from voluntary cooperation. Unity is only useful when people naturally feel unified because their tribe/group/family are highly beneficial to the members and the feelings and actions of unity emerge. Whenever someone has to preach or advocate for “unity” they are either manipulating you, or holding the water for someone else who is manipulating you.