Post #175: A Farewell to Politics

18 March 2025

“Look to your own faults,

What you have done or left undone.

Overlook the faults of others.”

—Dhammapada 50 (IV)

   When I keep finding myself drawn back to political matters, and to wielding sharp words about them, it’s not because doing so gives me such delight or strikes me as such a wholesome way to spend my time. For reasons of background, temperament, and training, the political poison happens to run in my veins, whether I like it or not. Let’s see how much blood I will leave on the floor even in announcing my intended retirement from the arena. Gladiators fight on sand for a reason.

     Attentive readers of my meditations will be aware how, over the past two years, I have repeatedly ventured into overtly political terrain (perhaps most notably #15, #68, #76, #156) while professing how uneasy it was making me to do so (see especially #122). I say overtly, because politics reaches into so much of what we do, whether we like it or not, that I am left with no illusions about being able to keep one’s distance for good from something as central to human life as the conflict over interests and outlooks, and the tribal allegiances with which they are almost invariably intertwined.

     What I propose to leave behind (if I can) is not my degrees in political science, nor politic per se, which is inescapable, but the political in the Schmittian sense of picking sides, of avowed partisanship and the rancor and bad blood that pervade the realm where the friend-enemy distinction reigns supreme. Our dualistic distinctions are necessary for survival, I admit, but they also limit us, and none more so than the most divisive and destructive dualism of all—the eternal carousel of for and against, which leads so seamlessly to us against them, over and over again.

     When I was growing up in the very shadow of the crumbling Iron Curtain, during what I have described as the great thaw of a political ice age that had seemed, only years before, as if it might last forever (see my last note to #68), and in a very political family to boot, it would have never occurred to me that I might one day wish to say my good-bye to all that. Politics, in my leftish-liberal circles, post-1968, had become what religion was to earlier ages, the central frame and mirror in which things appeared to get most accurately and truthfully reflected. To forswear a political orientation would have been more than to cast doubt on one’s good citizenship: it would have appeared in the light of a moral lapse. As among the Athenians of old, to remove oneself from politics would have been considered the act of an idiot (thus the etymology of the word).

     I would still maintain that a measure of concern for the res publica, the common weal, is something to be cultivated, not shrugged off; understanding what one can of the logic of politics, and of the basic fault-lines in a society, remains a salutary ambition, especially in a prospective voter (and a certified erstwhile political scientist like me). It so happens, however, that these days nobody is asking for my vote, nor much concerned with whether I ever cast one, since I continue (under protest) to hold only German citizenship and my voting rights there have lapsed after more than thirty years abroad—and no great loss to me, since I would not know what to do with my ballot anyway. I stopped availing myself of the mail-in option in once I had pretty much covered the mainstream spectrum, early in the 2000s (well before the appearance of the AfD). The only vote that fills me with a certain retrospective pride would be that of 1990, the first election in which East and West voted together (and my own rite of passage at eighteen), when I sided, from the West, with the Eastern civil liberties alliance, the makers of the revolution there who were largely left behind by ensuing events.

     Perhaps on account of the many rounds of molting I seem to have undergone along the way—especially the first and most shocking, in moving from 1980s Berlin to 1880s Oxford (or so it seemed), then on to California and New York, Canada and Singapore, Bhutan and Thailand—I find myself quite deficient (and this for some time now) in the key quality that is expected of the political partisan, namely reliable tribal affinity, as established by a series of litmus tests. Nobody can be expected to toe the line perfectly, of course, but practical politics seems to come down less to agreed-upon philosophical commitments, let alone policies, than to a shared, almost instinctive sense of where the battle lines run. I may draw some such lines myself, issue by issue, only they get hopelessly tangled and confused whenever I try to fit them together into something that might serve as the basis for adherence to any recognizable party-political alignment.

     Call it, for lack of a better term, my Rashomon problem: I can listen with complaisance to the same issue presented, in turn, by the various parties that divide into irreconcilable camps around it; my own sympathies may not be evenly divided, but I can usually see where the respective parties are coming from, much better than where I should be going with any of them. That I must stand somewhere, whatever I may do or say, is certain; what this means in practice, alas, is finding myself more or less alone, perhaps in the dunce’s corner, perhaps marooned somewhere in the no-man’s-land between the chairs. Neither here nor there, neither this nor that—yet not nihilism either, and no cynical rejection of the need for, or at least the inevitability of, political configurations. A willing citizen in principle, one might say, but in practice without a home wherever he may turn for temporary succor.

     That I can still draw lines sharply enough, the reader who has come across my more political posts will appreciate without difficulty; but these exercises do not add up to much that others would recognize as adequate to the fierce demands for fealty that are prevalent in the political arena—defined, as I’ve said, not by civil debate but by the fact that friends meet enemies there to fight things out, verbally if not physically. In my pained attempts at some kind of self-characterization on the political spectrum, I have resorted (in #68) to Trollope’s “advanced, but still conservative Liberal,” but that very way of putting things, which will sound like a mere elaborate oxymoron to many, illustrates my difficulties more than it points the way to any plausible resolution. Trollope had at least a party to vote for (Liberal), and he lived in times of such rapid progress, and relatively intact traditions, that being advanced and conservative was not the contradiction in terms that it would be today. We’ve got the same rapidity, perhaps, but not the same depth, and what passes for a “conservative” in our day’s smash-and-grab Trumpian context cannot stand the test of time for a minute.

     Given what aspersions I have cast on the woke agenda, some would no doubt expect me to be correspondingly sympathetic to Trumpism (if there is such a thing, and not just a one-man show, improv tragicomedy, by an entertainer-in-chief who carries all before him and permits occasional supporting acts by assorted yes-sayers). If so, they must be quite disappointed in me upon discovering that I find both the man and the politician (based on what is accessible to the public view at least) utterly insufferable and entirely unworthy of his high office, so far as I understand it (more or less in the spirit of the Federalist Papers, see #160).* The most I am willing to grant, under protest but resigned to the realities of the day, is that what we are currently undergoing may be some kind of “chemotherapy for the body politic,” as Victor Hanson has put it and I have repeatedly echoed—that is to say, a gut-wrenching ordeal that one can endure, at best, only in the hopes of better times to come.

     I for one am still waiting for the promised peace in Ukraine to be delivered by the magic-wand method two months after it was due (#157). We have everyday words for such overbig and overloud talk (#123), even if applying them does not settle the issue: to discover in someone the unmistakable marks of the loudmouth, the cheater, and the bully, leaves room, even with the most deplorable cases (let us hope) for redemption at least in part by compensating strengths and virtues. Only those would need to be put in evidence with corresponding clarity and force, and I sincerely regret being unable to discover anything of the sort in Mr. Trump. A certain plainness and directness in one’s speech and manner, combined with a demonstrated unwillingness to dissemble what one is really like, may be attractive in many contexts, but it is much less charming when it amounts to boasting before the world that one is an incorrigible jackass and that nobody can do much about it except fume helplessly.**

     I know, I know: such talk on my end will mark me out as an undesirable for the other side. Undesirable indeed, since I regret appearing to anyone in such a doleful light as much as our paragon of shining excellence in the White House seems to relish it. The only remedy I can think of—my main point in this meditation—is to pull back, if I can, from the deadlock in perspectives, in which both sides seem to be quite blind to what animates the other. It is this extreme gap in perceptions that disconcerts me far more than the irritating habit others have of taking a different view of things than I. They may even be right occasionally, only in this case I fail to see how, try as I may. That good may nonetheless come from bad, thus also from Trumpism, is an elementary lesson of politics (see my reference to Max Weber in #122), but no great consolation in the moment.

     Alas, I can see only too well how unsatisfactory such a position must appear to partisans on both side of the great divide, indeed even to myself. It is no joy for anyone to be as repelled as I am by what I can only see as Mr. Trump’s vulgarity, fundamental untruthfulness, and base character (#122, #147, #156–58), yet to feel an equal dread of what it would have meant for post-2020 trends (post-2012 really) to continue under a President Harris. Whatever I may grant to one side gets more than outweighed by what I feel obliged to say next on behalf of the other; on balance, it is not, I am quite aware, what anyone wants to hear. And as for myself, rather than gaining any snug sense of righteousness by all this miserable disputation, I find myself agitated painfully and poisonously, and quite contrary to the equanimity that I would like to be cultivating in life. I suppose it might be possible to place conciliatory tact before truth as I see it, but if there is something that repels me even more viscerally than taping my mouth shut, it would be dissembling what I actually believe. Speak truth, as far as you are able, or say nothing.

     Given how much the political picture one sees is bound to change with the slightest shift in angle (what I have called the kaleidoscope effect: #15 and #68); given how seriously I take J.S. Mill’s argument (in the magisterial second chapter of his On Liberty) that we must learn to appreciate our own fallibility much more than we do, and find political truth in shifting balances as much as in definite positions; given also how impressed I have been with the discussion of rampant overconfidence in our everyday decision-making (chapter 24 in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, for example), I think it is high time, after decades of struggling to make what sense I could of politics, to retire from active service and limit myself strictly to the role of an observer.

     I shall continue to wrestle with trying to understand what people are up to and why, but I will refrain from taking any position on the disputed frontlines myself any longer. (I mean in the usual electoral and party-political disputes: when it comes to educational or moral issues, there are battles that cannot be avoided even if one might wish to.) Whether others are succeeding any better at truly putting together the giant puzzles before whose complexities I can only throw up my hands in dismay remains doubtful, but the failings of others are not at issue here. Whatever the case may be, I cannot do anything about it one way or the other. So let my contemporaries be as rash and overconfident as they must, or as wise and correct as they can; I am only able to answer for myself, and even that much not always to my own satisfaction.

     I expect it to be no loss to the world if henceforth I shall foreswear the very ambition of getting politics right. I fear now that it may have always been a fool’s errand on my part, inasmuch as the political game does not run on truths and principles, or even agendas, so much as on the spirit of faction run more or less amok. (No recent discovery, this, except that Federalist #10 looks quaintly hopeful to me these days.) Again, I do not imagine myself stepping back from everything that politics touches, which is quite impossible; but I will no longer rack my brains, in vain, to find proper solutions for equations that are, I am now quite sure, beyond my (and possibly anyone’s) powers of reasonable reckoning. I reserve the right to change my mind, about this as about everything, but in the main I expect my renunciation of all political ambition, practical no less than theoretic, to result in a great unburdening and considerable relief.

     Straining oneself so desperately and unavailingly over a degree of complexity that one considers quite unmanageable in principle is not fun, nor is trying to find a home, or even a temporary political team to join, when one is apparently destined to remain a solo player, intellectually at least, on account of being too temperamentally unsuited to group-think of any kind, for better or for worse, to join oneself to any collective cause that would demand cognitive loyalty in return. Or maybe my concession of the game is best understood as a belated capitulation, after long resistance, before Plato’s conclusion that the philosopher who values his independence and won’t pipe down before the crowd had better take shelter behind his little wall, minding his own business and leading a quiet life, because he cannot survive in the storms of politics for long (Apology 31e/32a, Republic 496d).

     Let no one think that in saying so, I mean to vaunt myself or glamorize my condition. To be without a team or tribe to have recourse to may look romantic, but it is, first and foremost, a lonely, tiring, and hazardous situation to find oneself in. However justified the outcry may be, “A plague on both your houses!” is no way to endear yourself to the feuding clans who run the show. In politics as in prisons it is much safer to be wrong with a gang, even very wrong, than ever so right without one (and who can be sure anyway). Montaigne claims, it is true, to have saved himself during many years of fierce religious civil war by never locking his door to anyone; but that was a rare and marvelous feat.

     What makes our disputes so intractable, even beyond the irreconcilable interests, is that we are contending over nothing less than competing pseudo-realities, current in some corners rather than others, and favored by different political tribes, but invisible (or very nearly so) to anyone who approaches things from a different angle.*** To the true Way, the ensuing mess compares about as favorably as a sausage factory does to a petting zoo. Abattoirs there must be, I suppose, as long as humans insist on eating meat (which they are perhaps built to do); but I would not wish to live in our near one. Adieu.

*I could get more explicit and add that Mr. Trump looks to me like precisely the kind of character that the designers of the electoral college had in mind when they insisted on the need to interpose a salutary safety mechanism between the popular vote and the presidency.

**One of the more sobering explanations for why Mr. Trump’s outrageous antics are not only tolerated but applauded and admired by so many is that a considerable number of men (and along with them plenty of women who are attracted to the type) would like nothing better than to be able to carry on as he does, a bull in the china shop, laughing at all that education holds dear, and getting away with it. That overbearing behavior is a sign of strength, while being well-mannered and properly behaved is a game for weaklings and suckers, has ever passed for secular wisdom among the many and those who take themselves to be particularly shrewd about the ways of the world. It is nonetheless a barbarian’s creed that should and must appear disgraceful and contemptible to the cultured and the civilized.

   Not, I might add, that I would leave no room at all for wild men in a world whose civilizational veneer never runs as deep as we like to tell ourselves. It is no great ethical revelation that whoever values the life well-lived in the Platonic sense of doing the right thing occasionally, just because it is the right thing, must be willing to forgo advantages that someone more shameless, for whom life is about closing one overhyped and self-aggrandizing deal after another, may avail himself of quite freely. Politics is a rough business, and it cannot be gainsaid that shysters may be able to get things done before which more scrupulous and straight-laced characters are often helpless (#156). To face the facts is not to celebrate them.

     It is at best a pernicious half-truth to say, as the vulgar do, that nice guys finish last; but we may nonetheless admit that the rogue’s part, perhaps even that of the fiend, played with intelligence, charm, and style, can be irresistible even when reprehensible. If Mr. Trump had any of these darkly compelling qualities, I might desist a little in my distaste for him, as giving the devil credit where it is due. But I see no veritable demon, and certainly no prince of darkness, only a badly-raised, undereducated rich boy who was never taught (or who at least never learned) that noblesse, if it is to be that, confers obligations, not the right to push others around and arrange everything around one’s overcompensating ego. He may fancy himself a king (Postscript to #147), but all he can really manage in that direction is a childish caricature and a few tawdry flashes of tin-pot autocracy with a bit of superficial gold plating.

***I am by no means so conceited or deluded as to imagine that group-think doesn’t affect me, that I am always aware of its insidious effects, or ever immune from the distortions it induces. Only when I notice what is going on do I pull back, but that is only sometimes, and even then it tends to be too much, or too little, for the respective teams involved. I am reminded of an ancient Indian tale that made its way into the Pali Canon (Udana 6:4), where a king gathers a number of his birth-blind subjects in order that they might describe an elephant from their various tactile positions, depending on whichever part of the creature’s anatomy happens to come within the reach of their hands. The point of the story is not to laugh at others who seem more blind than we, nor to suggest that all the competing ways to describe the world are equally valid, but to recognize that because, starting as we all do from different premises and priorities, we do not actually get to the elephant we imagine, but remain forever limited to its parts, if even that much.