Over the past month or so, I’ve discussed ‘shared narratives’ – points of common agreement among smart people, that somewhat unexpectedly bring them together.
Is this the same as bi-partisanship? No. The far-right and the far-left (assuming the political spectrum is linear) are opposite to each other on many issues, but an example of a shared narrative is the rejection of ‘low information’ discourse.
Although it’s commonly agreed that ‘terrorism is bad’ or ‘the death of family members is bad’, these are more like truisms than ‘shared narratives’. They are so banal that they they cannot be used to forge any long-standing unity. Typically after a tragedy, such as 911, it’s not uncommon for both sides of the political aisle set aside their differences out of solidarity, but after a few weeks things typically return to how they were. On the other hand, shared narratives are long-standing.