Dialectic into Dialogos

Getting Past Politics as Team Sport

As the child is to the adult, the adult is to the Sage. — Ancient Proverb

Listening to Maverick Matt Lewis’s program recently, I came across a bit of very helpful analysis.

Two “Republicans” (perhaps better described as “Conservatives”) were describing two very different types of “Right”-leaning Anti-Trump sentiment. In the era of the RINO, these folks are all called “Never-Trumpers” — people who would ordinarily be seen as dependably checking “R” on the ballet, but who had major issues (and, in some cases, identity crises) when the real estate man from Queens became a troublesome force.

You may have guessed that the majority of these voters are solidly critical of the policies of the Biden White House (so far as any coherent sense can be made of said edifice).

Matt and his Guest split these folks into two “camps,” each concentric around two editorial boards of two media collectives.

“People at the Bulwark actively want to vote for the Democratic Party at this point, whereas people at the Dispatch (and the Never-Trumpers at the National Review) do not like the Democrats (and the prospect of a second Biden Presidency) any more than they like the prospect of a second Trump Presidency.” — Guy Denton

Lewis agreed with the distinction, but made a bit of a further (and very substantial) point.

“In fairness to the Bulwark people, I think maybe their motives are [that] the Republican Party must be destroyed — vanquished — and the only way to do that is for the Party to hit rock bottom so that Reagan Conservatism can come back.” — Matt Lewis

The nature of the bifurcation get slippery when one considers, “Well, don’t the Dispatch people want Reagan conservatism to come back, too?” Asking that question begets two more: “Who is more Reagan-like, Biden or Trump?” and “What is Republicanism if it transcends Reagan (considering both Lincoln and Trump, among many more)?”

These questions are worth their laboriously chewy mouthfeel for a couple of reasons. Professed Democrats (and the wildly disparate factions which also tend to vote that way) might want to understand “How can we do a better job of reaching the Dispatch people?” Understanding that could affect interpretations of Biden policy, influencing messaging in very substantial ways.

But, more than this, it’s worth wondering how we got into this mess in the first place, essentially bound by an ostensibly less and less useful (but perhaps, at least at the presidential level, necessary) two-party system.

I’m not a historian, and I am not even an armchair-level scholar on this topic. I have, however, disliked the two-party system since long before I was ever of legal age to vote. Part of my path into maturity has involved accepted the fact that voting has less to do with me choosing a presidential candidate who believes what I believe, and more with accepting a figurehead who will open the possibility that at least, given the right congressional alignment, a helpful bill might be signed rather than vetoed.

The reality is that no candidate at any level in any party believes what I believe. And I can look back to any public servant who ever showed up to work and nitpick infinitely. (I’m aware that calling them public servants sounds ironic in this era, but I choose to stick to that nomenclature, because it’s necessary and we ought not sacrifice it.)

John Russon, professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph, contends that maturity involves both improved self-knowledge and an improved capacity to face up to reality and all of its real challenges¹. I’ve taken great pains throughout my life to listen to as many voices as possible and synthesize the core concerns as best as possible to take considered stances on issues. At 43, I’m realizing that I simply don’t have the individual computer power to make that lift, and as much as I listen and read, I can’t possibly find the golden mean, and have to accept that politics will simply reflect the culture, whatever its ills. And, despite whatever myth of the well-tempered public servant of the past, no individual politician is going to have that power, either.

Hardcore Democrat Bill Scher, in another conversation with Matt, put it this way:

“The Democratic Party is a coalition. It is demographically diverse, it is ideologically diverse, and it needs a unifying force to keep it together. If you swap out the current incumbent, there’s no way to quickly reassemble it.”

The question then becomes “Is the Republican party also a coalition?” It might be tempting to think, “Well, it should be, because without a center we cannot have a philosophically coherent government which votes accordingly, and we cannot make legislation that attends to a healthy economy or a healthy society.”

But to make that assumption in the real circumstances of American society, with all of its very different people, sounds vaguely fascistic to me, and it makes another Reagan sound no more appealing than another Trump. Either way, you’re going to have one ideological group saying “This is what America is. This is what it needs. If you don’t like it, shut your mouth.” And, as Tom Nichols of the Atlantic (the author of Death of Expertise and Our Own Worst Enemy) also said to Matt:

“In isolation from other human beings, people really want to believe that they represent the majority view of things. And they just have a hard time accepting that millions of other people don’t agree with them. So when they are rebuffed politically, or they see outcomes that they don’t like [. . . ] they construct very elaborate reasons why that’s not their fault, and why it happens despite how popular they and their guy and their ideas are. Because only a really big conspiracy could thwart the things that they want.

But there’s also this huge, weird streak of narcissism involved in all of this, where ME and my political movement are so important that [undesirable forces] are merely there to screw with me.

[. . .]

I think for people who are constantly bored by the grind of daily life, this makes life interesting. You’re not just surrounded by pop stars and athletes. You are in the middle of this Hollywood movie where [the enemy] is conniving to deprive you. It’s silly, it’s childish, but it’s also dangerous.

[. . .]

I have a theory that people who claim to be flat-earthers are just lonely and attention-seeking. They just want someone to come and argue with them [. . .] because they just want someone to talk to them about anything.

[. . .]

When you are in isolation from other people not only are you lonely and crave a sense of community, but you start slicing that sense of community very fine so that the dopamine hit is by associating only with people who completely agree with you.”

Now, Matt has done something amazing in that he has conversed with Liberal Bill Scher every week for decades. When they disagree on a point, Matt is actually the one in the pair more likely to say, “I grant your argument, but I choose to disagree.” For that reason, as well as for the fact that they are both well-read and attentive to all of the goings-on I have too much time to follow, I continue to listen to their conversations.

One promising potential on the ground is the practice of Circling, in which people communicate in a very measured, meditative way such that they can learn to hear one another, rather than listen with the intention of responding. This technique involves going out of your way to indicate that you have heard what the other said before you respond.

You can’t do this while drunk, or stoned. And you can’t do it in a friend group who simply agrees with you.

But if you do it consistently, and with discipline and reverence, you can do it in such a way that what emerges is a new sensibility for the nature of the problem.

And we need that badly. But we also need something far more important, and far more difficult. We need to stop thinking that “our candidate” means “my faction’s candidate” and instead think of it as “the representative who was elected, who is now tasked with governing all of us.”

This could take decades to achieve culturally. We had hoped that the internet, social media, and now even AI, would break the back of radio and tv and change the way that people started thinking about issues. But the reality is that all of that is more and more designed to target markets, essentially spoon-feeding people the ideas that they already accept.

And until we grow up and stop living in the illusion that there is a correct way, and that the candidate who embodies that is the correct candidate, we’re not going to get past this. We need to start thinking of the country as the richly diverse dynamical system that it is, and start imagining the best possible approaches for the best number of people, acknowledging that none of us will ever be satisfied. That’s called reality.

And, despite my own biases and prejudices, it is ultimately far more Beautiful.

1. This comes from a paraphrase by John Vervaeke in After Socrates.