There is more than a little irony in the fact the MAGAverse held its end zone victory dance while attending UFC fights at Madison Square Garden last week. This testosterone-fueled exhibit of masculine toxicity occurred just as Democratic pugilists were launching their own cage match, pitting progressives against moderates in the blame game. Whether moving left or better defending the merits of the middle might have produced a better result, it’s clear the struggle for addition (contrary to a Democratic presumption President-elect Donald J. Trump was subtracting supporters daily), went to the former president. The 2024 election results are indisputable — Democrats were unwittingly hemorrhaging voters.

There is ample reason to believe the nastiness of our politics is rooted in something more than partisan allegiance. Perhaps, at the extremes of the right and left existential anxiety exists. By contrast the bulk of voters who have survived half-a-century of economic, political and governing rot — democracy itself is now in doubt. Faith that the American political system operates on our behalf has slipped to between a quarter and a third of voters. The vast majority see U.S. Congress as a failure that delivers benefits unfairly to elites atop a corrupt exchange of favors for campaign contributions.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Returning Trump to the White House is recognized by his voters as a calculated gamble. As Forbes magazine recently reported, Trump doubled his net worth from $2.2 billion to $4.5 billion during the past eight years. He isn’t bothering to divest his business interests during a second term and can be expected to continue sluicing riches into his family holdings. Yet, this may seem a reasonable price to pay if he proves willing to flip over the dining table and smash all the china in Washington. Certainly, Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t be counted on to do so, any more than would have been true for Hillary Clinton. The reality, of course, is Trump will devote more energy accumulating personal wealth than he will to providing access to the American Dream for the rest of us.

There are a dozen, or more, non-profit think-tanks devoted to examining the nature of the American Dream. American University has conducted a yearly survey that asks young men and women, likely weighted toward college students, what their definitions of and expectations for achieving their American Dreams look like. There is no single, commonly accepted definition, but they usually encompass “…a set of ideals including representative democracy, rights, liberty, and equality, in which freedom is interpreted as the opportunity for individual prosperity and success, as well as the chance for upward social mobility for each according to ability and achievement through hard work in a capitalist economy…” according to Wikipedia.

Recently, a national poll offered competing visions of the American Dream. One defined it as the equal opportunity to achieve individual financial and social success through the exercise of personal skills and talents, while the other described it as the structure of a civil society in which every citizen enjoys a financially stable, comfortable standard of living and quality of life into retirement. Forty-nine percent identified with each option, while the remaining fraction were “not sure” or claimed neither to be achievable. These alternatives offer two very different views of how to organize American society. In what is now regarded as a 50-50 nation, I can’t help suspecting the Venn diagram overlaying party affiliation with these viewpoints would indicate a remarkable congruence: individual achievement equals conservative/Republican and communitarian prosperity equals Democratic/liberal.

This comparison may proffer a false distinction. There is substantial historical evidence societies that permit and encourage the full development and blossoming of individual potential are more successful and thereby benefit more members. Likewise, societies that reward all citizens fairly, if not precisely equally, create conditions which better provide opportunity for personal flourishing. We need both. These may not be competing, but rather symbiotic approaches for organizing our collective lives. Shouldn’t hairdressers, auto mechanics, security guards and other blue-collar workers command incomes that permit family vacations, the occasional frivolous expense and infrequent gourmet meals? Shouldn’t children in these families enjoy debt-free access to higher education, as was once guaranteed throughout the United States?

We seem able to treat each other with equal care and respect when disaster strikes. In the December issue of Harper’s magazine, Gary Greenberg, first selectman (mayor) of Scotland, Connecticut, (population 2,500) recounts the tale of a tornado and subsequent flood which tore through his village, destroying two bridges and stranding six homes. He describes a town meeting decision to spend all its financial reserves to reconnect these few families. He explains, “There’s one thing the Puritan preachers (in Scotland) had that I did not: a congregation held together by their conviction they all faced the same predicament and so they better do it together… the recognition that community is the correct response to the extended emergency we call life, that this must come before everything else — that we are all we have… is one thing the Puritans got right, and that we have lost in the floods of time.”

I’m not sure how we promote such agreements, but it probably starts by taking President Joe Biden’s advice to “turn down the heat on our political discourse.” Though there are extremists in both parties who desire to tear down or reconfigure our democracy, there are few Americans truly intent on destroying the nation. None that I know. The only radicalism I find among the middle majority is a desire for government to function on their behalf. Why is that difficult?

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.