An Emotional Argument for Politics

I recently saw someone talking about accidentally seeing a political CNN bit on television. They and their friends agreed how monumentally stupid it was. Now don't get me wrong, there is plenty to criticize cable news over and on the precious few occasions I watch it, I absorb everything they say with a skeptical eye/ear. But the sentiment in this discussion was that the media shouldn't be covering the political process and only focus on The Issues as if the two could be divorced. To some extent, I agree--mostly because the Both Sides narrative that major outlets peddle so that they can be seen as unbiased is infuriating, and that narrative is only possible because of the political process. But it made me think about how so many people of all stripes think of politics as this stupid thing where politicians are too petty and egotistical to get anything done, and if clearheaded people were in charge, everything would be solved. So that's what I'm going to talk about.


This disdain for politics, which is rampant in those who don't care to follow it at all, is a luxury and communicates to me a profound lack of curiosity. Their contempt makes me wonder if these people have ever had an argument before where both they and the other side had wants that were equally valid to themselves, and being straightforward, clean, and honest with each other couldn't lead to any meaningful action because neither one of them wanted to change. Here's an example of such an argument, and let's say they're siblings who have been roommates for several years:

X: I don't like how you challenge my religious beliefs all the time.

Y: I don't like how you're constantly talking about your religion when you know I follow a different religion. I don't talk about my religion to you. If you want to talk about your religion, you should do it in private spaces or when I'm not around. 

X: I don't talk about it to you, I talk about it to my friends. 

Y: Your friends are constantly over at our apartment and you proselytize all the time. 

X: This apartment doesn't belong to just you and it's not my fault that you spend so much time in the common spaces of our apartment. My religious beliefs are just as important to me as yours are to you. Also, I don't "proselytize," I'm sharing my life with my friends. 

Y: I bought the TV and don't have the space for it in my bedroom, which is why I hang out in the living room so often. 

X: You aren't involved in my talking to my friends, so why does it matter?

Y: It matters because I live here and I come into contact with it. 

X: I don't like how you bring people over for casual sex every other night, but you don't see me challenging you on it every time you do. 

Y: I still notice how you treat me worse for having my partners over. My partners have always been respectful and we don't make a lot of noise or leave a mess. Your religious beliefs play a large role in your disapproval of my lifestyle. It makes my partners uncomfortable as well. 

A couple things: 

1) my decision to leave in the part about word choice ("proselytize") despite the "clean" part of "straightforward, clean, and honest" was to further demonstrate how person X and person Y see person X's behavior. 

2) sibling-hood is a rough analogue for natural citizenship, the apartment for country/state, and common spaces for public life/services/amenities. Other aspects are very fuzzy, but no analogy is perfect. (I do have to say it's fun to think about how this analogy could be extended--adopted siblings being naturalized citizens, people who aren't on the lease but still pay bills being undocumented immigrants, etc.) 

Who is in the wrong here? Sure, there are concessions that either person could make--Y could only ever have their hookups at their partners' places, X could stop mentioning religion altogether whenever Y is around, Y could shut up and deal--but they don't want to and their stubbornness is justified. (Side note: if you're atheist or agnostic, X's religiosity could be replaced by X being an LGBTQ person and discussing LGBTQ matters to make the point that X shouldn't have to be silent, though religion can be harmful in a way that LGBTQ people's existence isn't. Or if you really want to get thorny, replace religiosity with abortion rights activism!) The measure of being a "good person" and who "deserves" to dictate common space policies depends on what beliefs you hold. 

The best solution would be for these two people to stop being roommates. But what happens if one or both of them don't have the means to leave and/or have a vested interest in staying? And imagine this conflict in real life. I expect that it'd likely contain more hostile language and denials/exaggerations, with both parties dredging up past missteps and grievances in order to bargain their way into being the one who decides what happens. 

There's this idea that politicians should be "above it all." But consider that in any dispute between two people or groups, someone who has no emotional stake in the issues at hand will think that the details of their conflict, especially the tactics each party uses, are stupid and petty. However, for those who do have an emotional stake, everything matters. When you are on one person's side, or are that person, how do you try to persuade others? You bring the virtues of your favored person/argument to the forefront, minimize their faults, and trumpet the other side's negatives. You end up defending or denigrating how each person made their argument, be it actions or words, and that context becomes important. I've done it, my friends have done it, and there's no way you haven't done it. It's human. Now imagine that those issues involve millions of people, both in terms of the number of people affected and to get to agree with you. What would you do if you had all that on your shoulders? Would you be content to cite only facts and statistics while qualifying all of them with reams of nuance and survey/study limitations? No, you would use moral arguments and dirty tricks because pure objectivity doesn't convince people. The circus is indelibly part of the process.

All this isn't to say that I'm on board with said circus. Hell, if I had my way, our political process would be considerably less transparent (sorry about the paywall, but I promise it's worth it, even though it is only adjacent to this topic) to curtail the grandstanding and make politicians as accountable to each other as we want them to be to us. It'd be awesome if we could dial the messiness down from where it is now, but to dismiss it entirely as dumb and unnecessary is to misunderstand democracy. There's a huge discussion to be had about balancing tactics and morality, but that isn't this post's concern. And there's something to be said about those who appear to simultaneously want politicians to be more like the "common person"--more like them--yet expect them to be "better," erasing their humanity and brooking no argument for human foibles. You can't have both.

Politics is the name we give to the institution of arguing for how we think the world should be run. Why shouldn't people care about the particulars?