Joe Biden has built his 2020 presidential campaign around the idea that “we are in a war for the soul of America.” I think it’s a great slogan because it captures the idea that we’re in the midst of a moral struggle over who we are as a nation. IN video Released this week to launch his re-election bid, he doubled down on that idea: We are still, he said, “in a battle for the soul of America.”
I wanted to focus on the “soul” of the little world in that sentence because I think it sheds light on the content of the 2024 presidential election.
What is soul? Well, religious people have an answer to that question. But Biden does not use the word in a religious sense, but in a secular sense. He is saying that people and nations have a moral nature, a soul.
Whether you believe in God or not in God is not my forte. But I ask you to believe that every person you meet has this virtuous nature, this soul quality.
Since human beings have souls, each person has infinite value and dignity. Since man has a soul, everyone is equal. We are not equal in terms of physical strength, IQ or net worth, but we are completely equal on the level of who we really are.
Soul is the name we can give to the part of our consciousness where the moral life takes place. The soul is the source of our moral feelings, which make us admire generosity and disgust at the sight of cruelty.
It is also where our moral aspirations come from. Most people aspire to have a good life. When they act cooperatively, their souls sing and they are happy. On the other hand, when they feel their lives have no moral purpose, they suffer from mental illness—feelings of alienation, pain, and self-scorn.
Because we have souls, we are morally responsible for what we do. Hawks and cobras are not morally responsible for their actions; but humans, who possess souls, are caught up in a moral drama, either doing good or doing bad.
Political campaigns are not usually contests for the status of souls. But Donald Trump, and Trumpism in general, embodies an ethos that embraces the soul. Or to be more precise, each person is a soul-deadening characteristic under the domination of the ego.
Trump, and Trumpism in general, represent a kind of nihilism you might call unethical realism. This ethos is built on the idea that we live in a world where dogs eat dogs. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they have to. Can do right. I have a point in grabbing all I can because if I don’t, someone else will. People are selfish; face to face with it.
This ethos – central not only to Trump’s but also Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping’s approach to life – allows people to be selfish. In an immoral world, cruelty, dishonesty, vanity, and arrogance are considered survival skills.
Those who live by the rules of unethical realism tear down the rules and customs that have been built up over the centuries to foster kindness and foster cooperation. Putin is not constrained by concepts of human rights. Trump is not constrained by the usual rules of honesty.
In the mind of an immoral realist, life is not a moral drama; it’s a struggle for power and interest, red teeth and nails. Others are not possessors of infinite souls, dignity and worth; they are the object used.
Biden talks a lot about the struggle between democracy and dictatorship. At the deepest level, that struggle takes place between systems that place the dignity of individual souls at the center and systems that operate according to the logic of domination and subjugation.
You may disagree with Biden on many issues. You might think he’s too old. But that is not the main issue in this election. The presidency, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “is clearly a place of ethical leadership.”
One of the hardest, most exhausting parts of life under Trump’s presidency is that we have to endure a barrage of lies, transgressions, and demoralizing behavior. We are all consumed by it. That era serves as a reminder that the soul of the people, the soul of the nation is always in motion, each day going up a little or going down a little.
A return to that ethos would lead to an unpredictable moral and social disintegration. Say what you want about Biden, but overall, he puts human dignity at the center of his political vision. He treats everyone with charity and respect.
The rivalry between Bidenism and Trumpism is less Democratic than Republican or liberal versus conservative than between a vision that is fundamentally moral and a vision that is fundamentally unethical, competition between correctness and vice versa.
