The thing about talking politics is we all start with assumptions. We’re just never actually on the same page with them.
Episode 21 of the Make Saints podcast: “Politics”
Nothing clears a room like talking politics. Mostly because we’re doing it wrong. Not so much in how we talk politics, but in how we conceptualize it. The real reason we can’t talk politics with others is not just because we’re saying something wrong. It’s also because we hear it wrong. Because we’re all processing it wrong.
So let’s talk politics.
Loving Politics
[I should probably state from the beginning that I’m talking about politics from a particularly U.S. perspective. A lot of what I’m about to say also fits outside our milieu, of course, so translate it as you need to. But it really applies to us.]
I love politics. And I also loathe it.
There’s a thing about politics that is really revealing; and I don’t just mean ideologically. Or even the caricature we think is our character. I mean revealing about the way we think about life itself. Our purpose. And how we even relate to one another. Much of politics today actually revolves around the idea of whether or not individuals and groups even exist.
But I think the best test to see what kind of person I am talking to is not to ask them whether a glass is half empty or half full (though that can be revealing—especially when they say “both”—because the nonanswer is an answer that is pretending to not be one). It is to ask them how they feel about politics. Because pessimists won’t always cop to their pessimism. Especially when it is dressed as neutrality. But disdain for politics gets it out of them.
Now the real reason we struggle with talking politics is that it is fraught with problems and we don’t want to get stuck.
And at the root of it all is the ridiculous idea that politics is simple. Or more precisely, more simple than it is. And more complicated than it is.
The real reason we struggle with talking about politics is that we can’t communicate. Because we’re all using shortcuts.
That’s Problem #1: shortcuts.
Problem #2: Dualism
We frame all of our politics in the US as a choice between two options. Everything is always either/or. You’re with me or against me. We’re in or we’re out. It is good or it is bad.
This means that everything (and I mean everything) gets filtered in our brains as either left or it is right; liberal or conservative.
Of course, this is helpful for the partisan two-party system. And it is really helpful for giving us shortcuts. Because then we can pick a position based, not only on what we want, but what we don’t want. We don’t have to just be for something, we can be against something because we’re against someone.
This also comes out in our most pernicious of phrases: I want to hear “both sides” of an argument. Now this phrase presupposes that arguments only have two sides.
Of course, legislation has two sides: for or against. But the movement behind the legislation (and against it) have many sides. And almost nothing in life has only two sides.
For example: the car accident
How often do we frame this story as he said/she said? One car collides with another. We want to determine what happened and why. And because we love scapegoating, we want to seek out who is responsible so they can be punished.
We cast this story as one with two characters representing two sides: victim and perpetrator; good and evil.
So we dig into whether or not one driver was distracted, what the laws of the state are, and whether the one did anything on purpose. All of this is useful. And confusing.
What we rarely interrogate is just how our framing of an event with only two points of view blinds us to, say, the drivers that swerve to miss the accident, the police officer taking statements, and the insurance companies granting or denying claims. There are countless perspectives, not two.
The main problem with dualism is that it is a shortcut that cuts out so much of the truth, we often can’t trust the outcomes.
So we start looking for complexity
But dualism and complexity are incompatible. It doesn’t allow for multiple sides. Nor does it allow for difference of opinion within a side.
What happens when someone on our “team” is wrong? Dualism doesn’t care. Your team is your team.
But what if it is the opposite of what her predecessor supported? Dualism still doesn’t care. Consistency is not required of dualists. Everything must be either/or. It doesn’t say we can’t trade places.
And yet, anyone who loves dualism and consistency suddenly has a problem. Because they don’t line up half as much as we think they do, and a fraction of what we want it to. So we seek another measurement:
Problem #3: the spectrum.
We draw a line and put “left” on one end and “right” on the other. Well, now this feels better, right? We can now differentiate within left and right and allow for some complexity around that hazy middle. This sounds good: we’re killing two birds with one stone here!
Now we can demonize the people on both sides of us! It isn’t just both sides of an issue, we can now find enemies who are too extreme and demonize them, too! It is all too brilliant, isn’t it?
Of course, the spectrum theory still doesn’t help us deal with certain objective truths, like when a liberal adopts a classically conservative position. And the vagueness of the spectrum is all so arbitrary. Like, what even is liberal or conservative, anyway?
And what the heck do we do with the center of the spectrum, where people like to hang out and pretend they don’t have any positions at all.
But that isn’t even the worst problem.
Problem #4: Arbitrary Switching
As bad as shortcuts, dualism, and spectrum politics are for communicating with each other, the worst problem by far is that we switch between all of this constantly, within the same argument, and without noticing.
We apply the arbitrariness of the spectrum and the clarity of the dualism at the same time, like a boss pretending he’s “one of the guys” on the shopfloor. It doesn’t work. You don’t get to have both—without one canceling the other out.
So we apply the simplistic clarity of dualism and the simplistic relativity of the spectrum to the same moment. And we do this so we can evaluate something as objectively liberal and subjectively too liberal without doing the work of defining what any of these things mean.
We are being arbitrary, inconsistent, and imprecise without even noticing it. And this is because of our final problem:
Problem #5: Ungrounded Conversation
It isn’t just that we are using two concepts interchangeably. It is that combining these conflicting methodologies still doesn’t solve our problem.
Because none of the things we’re doing actually set up an objective definition of liberal or conservative. They all depend on relational contrast.
We may want clarity and vagueness at the same time, which is complicated enough! And academics love to do this, so yeah, we think we can do it, too. But we are doing this by also mixing objective and relational definitions without really grounding either.
Even though dualism loves clarity, it loathes objective definitions. Because everything becomes dependent on the other. Left must be opposite of right. Even when there are a thousand other options, they must be defined as one.
The clarity dualism brings to spectrum thinking, isn’t objectivity. They are both subjective and relational.
Solutions
So if what is missing from all of our conversations is actually clear, objective definitions, it seems this would be the most logical solution, doesn’t it? This is certainly what political scientists work with.
Of course, if it were so simple, there would be no confusion. The objectivity of academic definitions would rule the day and we’d obviously all be having sober conversations about the effectiveness of certain processes without all this ridiculous partisanship. Which is so obviously fantasy.
I suspect the most viable solution to our problems is in questioning our very first problem itself: that we desire shortcuts. And use shortcuts so we can label something rather than actually deal with it.
Labels like liberal and conservative make it easy to support and dismiss. Just like calling something “too liberal” or “too conservative” does the same thing.
Similarly, we can avoid dealing with something like gun violence because it is “too hard” and ineffective compromises can be harrolded for their “bipartisan appeal.”
But more importantly, this ridiculous view of politics means that you and I feel like we can’t have a discussion about things that directly impact us and the people we love. Because it would be called political.Which, if we think about it, may be the most insidious and destructive political position of them all.