Politics are smothering life
We lack the open space needed to talk with each other
Partisan politics has crept into every corner of American life. Every topic, from jokes to films, is now refracted through that lens. It’s a revoltin’ development, as one sitcom character used to say, and it’s time to call it out.
Most issues do have a political dimension, of course. But seeing everything that way leaves no space for other topics, no room for play or humor or friends with different views. It intrudes on the private world of family, friends, and voluntary associations. People need that space to flourish. A tolerant, liberal democracy should provide it.
I saw this suffocating environment up-close and personal this week when I posted a funny comment by Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy. His earthy metaphors and odd juxtapositions make him one of Washington’s most quotable figures. In today’s hyper-divisive politics, however, even the most innocuous quote can land you in the briar patch. I felt a few of those thorns when I posted his comment.
What did Mr. Kennedy say? “Trusting Russia, North Korea and Iran is like trusting a Jussie Smollett police report.” What’s wrong with that? Not a thing. It’s funny, fair and memorable. But when everything is partisan, you can always find something wrong. If nothing comes readily to mind, blame the speaker for something else. He’s from the wrong political party. He supports the wrong policies. He’s the wrong race. He’s the wrong gender. This sour perspective, says Sen. Kennedy, is “why aliens won’t talk to us.”
In case that line had you furiously logging onto Twitter, he meant extraterrestrials, not migrants. I’m with the ETs and spaceships on this one. So are most Americans. I’m not trying to click my heels three times and make partisan differences magically disappear. Our country faces big, difficult issues. The partisan divide often has roots in real policy differences.
But what makes that divide so dangerous is that we split along the same party lines on issue after issue. That undermines a crucial assumption of the nation’s founding, set down right there in the Federalist Papers, which argued that our large republic would be stable because the various “factions” would cut across each other. That’s not true today. A citizen’s views on, say, immigration, are likely to predict his views on guns, abortion, taxes, health care, school choice, publicsector unions and centralized government. Not always, but often, and it’s true all across the country. The differences are amplified by the two parties, which use them to mobilize their base voters.
The result is predictable. We keep cutting the national pie along the same line, deeper and deeper, time after time. If we keep at it, we’ll cut through the metal pan. We compound the danger by interpreting everything, even anodyne quotes, as yet another reflection of partisan politics. That’s true even for benign comments like Mr. Kennedy’s about America’s worst enemies. It’s worth remembering that sometimes a funny observation is just that, not a partisan dig. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. It’s not always an invitation to talk about the perils of smoking, the masculinity of cigar lounges, or the wisdom of regulating e-cigarettes.
Seeing everything through a tendentious, partisan lens eliminates the open space we need to talk with each other, not only about politics but about everything else. It squeezes our lives down to a single dimension and suffuses that dimension with hate and contempt. It’s a short step from such loathing to suppressing opposing viewpoints, which is exactly what’s happened on so many college campuses.
The good news is that this lens of “all politics all the time” is unsustainable. People want to fire up the backyard barbecue without having to discuss its effect on global warming. They want to grill a burger without having to talk about climatefriendly agriculture and vegan diets. They want to watch an awards show without listening to political harangues. Most of all, they want Debbie Downer to go home and let us enjoy a burger and beer in peace.