What Went Down During Joe Biden’s Inauguration

Biden is extolling “tolerance and humility” and “standing in the other person’s shoes” as a way of ending the county’s “uncivil war.” As political scientists like Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe have documented, this is not going to be easy for some people to do. A significant chunk of Americans (around 15 – 20 percent) think violence against the other party is at least sometimes justified. Dehumanization, too, is an increasingly prevalent feature of American partisanship, as FiveThirtyEight contributor Erin Cassese has found. Grappling with those dark realities is going to be one of the biggest challenges of Biden’s presidency.

Biden said, “We must end this uncivil war.” This speech has made clear that Biden’s administration knows what it is up against, in terms of the growing political polarization in the U.S., or what academics have recently referred to as political sectarianism.

For me, Sarah, he has to go further than reaching across the aisle and getting some bipartisan bills through Congress. This is a much bigger issue than legislation. What kind of efforts will Biden make to reach the citizens who believe the election was stolen? Who believe in a conspiracy theory that there is an evil cabal of child traffickers? I’m not sure if it’s possible, but that needs to be the goal.