DIVIDED, AMERICANS STAND — BUT POLARIZED, WE WILL FALL

Did you hear that? In a thundering voice, our country has spoken.

Nearly 150 million Americans voted in our presidential election. Turnout exceeded 66 percent, the highest since 1908. This year, no one needed a reminder to participate in the process.

Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. Kamala Harris will be the first female vice president — but also, the first Black woman, the first South Asian woman and the first daughter of immigrants to hold the role. Biden and Harris secured a record-setting number of votes: more than 77 million, according to the latest tally.

Yet President Donald Trump also secured a record number of votes: some 72 million in all, or 47 percent of the popular vote. Biden stands at 50 percent.

That’s a narrow margin. Democrats were disappointed that repudiation of Trump wasn’t more pronounced. Nearly half of the electorate supported him.

It’s not the first time an American election has been this close. The elections of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were close, too, just to name a few. In 2016, Trump received 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, but he won the majority of votes in the Electoral College. More often than not, our loyalties — and our votes — are split right down the middle.

In a recent interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham described the United States as perennially divided: patriot versus Tory, North versus South, agrarian versus industrial. We are a country, said Meacham, that has always been more defined by our divisions than our moments of unity.

But what’s different now is that our country isn’t just divided. It’s polarized. Our political parties have shown an intractable unwillingness to compromise, compounding and intensifying our differences. It all seems so personal now.

Our citizenry is complicit: We have taken sides and dug in, writing off friends, family members and co-workers with opposing views as a “lost cause.” We’ve mastered the technique of “unfriending.” A 2018 study by political scientists Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason found that 15 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats believed that the U.S. would be better off if large numbers of the opposing party “just died.” That’s astonishing and sad.

How did we get to this tumultuous point? And how do we get past it — and become one country again?

For his part, Biden has promised to be a president for all Americans and not just the people who voted for him. But it’s not all up to him.

We each have to do our part. It starts with cutting loose the hurt and bitterness tied to this most difficult year. Keeping other people at arm’s distance doesn’t help to heal the country, especially at a time when healing means coming together.

Nor is it a time for winners to gloat, or for losers to deny and threaten. If we weaponize the results of the election, America won’t be any better off. It’ll be hard to swallow the prospect of four more years of entrenchment.

So, if you’re ready, channel your feelings in a productive way. Instead of hurling insults or writing people off, do the harder thing: Welcome the tough conversations, even the ones that shake you to the core. It’s the only way to soften hearts and minds, and to encourage deeper and more critical thinking.

Here are three tips for reaching across the divide:

1. Engage, despite your righteous anger. Challenge yourself to talk — voice to voice, person to person. Do it thoughtfully and with respect. When you converse with your Maga-loving Aunt Mabel about the election at Thanksgiving dinner (or your familial Zoom call) know that she may be feeling wronged or even robbed.

2. Express curiosity. Ask “why” because you are genuinely interested in finding out why another person feels the way they do — and not because you want to put them on the spot. Asking why, and then listening to the answer, can lead to an invaluable discussion about past experiences. It’s a way to humanize an exchange.

3. Acknowledge differences but try to find similarities, too. Your words will seem less threatening. Even when our politics differ, we can find common ground based on shared concerns. Challenge yourself to find that common ground. It can be the basis for productive conversation and problem solving.

Being a divided country is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. It has defined our democracy since our nation’s founding nearly 250 years ago. But to heal, we must come together around our common humanity and shared national purpose.

Let’s get started.

Dinkin is president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group working to create solutions to challenging issues, including intolerance and incivility. To learn about NCRC’S programming, visit ncrconline.com