From my co-author‘s brother Greg Weiner:
[I]n addition to being treacherous and menacing, the insurrectionists are also, strictly speaking, pathetic. These are grown men and women whose lives are apparently so devoid of other sources of meaning that their self-worth depends on who occupies the White House. No one should care about presidential elections so intimately or intensely. If single elections are sincerely perceived to threaten personal identity or civilizational survival, too much is at stake.
There are lessons in these events for how Biden can help repair American political life. If the aspiration is, as leaders of all stripes have said, to “lower the temperature,” we do not need simply calmer politics or different politics. We need less politics.
And:
For all the anti-government rhetoric of the Trump movement, it subsisted on the illusion of relationships of personal caretaking between individuals and the president. The conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet explained totalitarianism in terms of this ardent affection for politicians. The human need for community remains when traditional social bonds collapse, he wrote, so people seek it in the superficial realm of the state instead.
The last four years have upped the dose of politics so high that “less politics” is a reasonable prediction. But I’ll still give “the same or more” 30%. Fortunately, you can build a beautiful Bubble for yourself regardless of the political climate if you try. So try.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas Hutcheson
Feb 5 2021 at 8:11am
One route to “less politics” would be to make voting so easy and routine that riling up the partisan base to rev up turnout would become a less viable tactic. We should try to bring forward boring old policy instead of exciting “politics.”
Mark Z
Feb 6 2021 at 6:54pm
If many people don’t vote because it’s too hard, then riling up the base wouldn’t help, since getting someone angry doesn’t make it easier for them to vote. I think main reason people don’t vote is apathy or lack of preference, and that’s the hurdle ‘riling up’ is meant to overcome, which wouldn’t change if voting were trivially easy. Making voting mandatory would make ginning up turnout a moot issue, but I think that particular cure would be worse than the disease.
Scott Sumner
Feb 5 2021 at 12:28pm
Here’s how I like to put it. Where do people feel more passionate about who is elected president (or PM), Switzerland or Venezuela? Which country would you like to resemble?
MarkW
Feb 6 2021 at 1:28pm
I’m not sure I see a reduction in political passion until I see less dramatic partisan disagreement about so many issues. At this point, the parties don’t agree on much of anything important. Not on the economy, not on immigration, not on a whole host of culture war issues, not on global warming and fossil fuels, not on foreign policy (even to the extent of which countries we should consider allies). And because of reality of major decisions now being made by executive order alone, the occupant of the Whitehouse really does matter. Even more when you count the momentous changes that come from USSC decisions (which are downstream of the imperial presidency). And neither of the major parties seems the slightest bit interested in the libertarian expedient of devolving the size and power of the federal government. Instead each side wants to win and impose its will. I expect more of the same only even more so.
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