In Defense of Ambivalence

As the year 2017 draws to a close, the world has seldom been so binary. You either love Donald Trump or you loathe him. You either adore Brexit or abhor it. This polarization has been fostered by the giant online social networks of our time and the phenomenon that students of networks know as “homophily.” In plain English, birds of a feather flock together.

Facebook encourages you to like or not like what you see in your Newsfeed. Twitter allows you to retweet or like other people’s tweets or block those users who offend your sensibilities.

In this binary world, there is not much room for ambivalence. I have had a tough time this year explaining even to friends why I can like some aspects of the Trump administration while at the same time disliking others.

A good occasion for more ambivalence is the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy, published last week. As usual, there were plenty of commentators ready to denounce it and to predict the imminent end of days. In reality, this new document is a great improvement on the last administration’s essays in “strategic patience.”

Gone are the highfalutin but vacuous proclamations of virtue that were President Obama’s signature tune. Instead, we have a muscular and unambiguous identification of the principal threats to the United States, and a clear commitment to meet those threats by force if necessary.