Whither Unity?

President Biden is calling for unity. Well, all right. I'm for unity too. Yet that is in fact where the trouble begins: unity for what purpose or to what degree is he asking of me?

If you wish me to unite with you for abortion rights the answer is a hard no. There is no unity on that issue: either you get your way or I get mine, simple as that. I will do what I can to fight the Biden Administration there. I will not unify with the President or anyone else in favor of abortion.

If you mean unite in the sense that we do not go to war on the question, I'm down with that. I'm okay with such basic unity. We agree to refrain from physically slapping one another around when we disagree, even emphatically. Cool beans.

Perhaps that is what the President meant in his inaugural address. Yet I don't believe so. I think all it was to him was a baseless platitude, a throwaway sentiment, a gushy pandering which serves little purpose but to appear, on the surface, good. "Did you hear that?" he hopes people will say. "Biden wants unity."

That is as empty of meaning as wanting diversity or education or tolerance. Diversity only means A isn't B. This fails to address the underlying and potentially critical questions of the real differences between A and B. 

Education towards what purpose? Tolerance of what and why? Those questions ask, properly, for the contexts in which those words might have useful meaning. The same with unity. The Soviet Union had unity. But would you really want to have lived there?

As it is, without consideration of the what abouts and whys surrounding it, pleas for unity belong on the trash heap of overused, overhyped, and little understood words such as diversity and tolerance. Biden wanted nothing but a sound bite. I'm sure he got it.