Against Politics as Identity
You are not who you vote for.
It’s a political time in America.
To be fair, I don’t know if there’s been a time everyone could confidently say was not political, but it feels today like politics stretches its tentacles into every facet of life.
Trump is in the news every day because that’s where the man wants to be, and the news sources that shriek their hatred of him into the void secretly benefit from his behavior - Trump news gets clicks.
I’ve had conversations with friends and family on the subjects of abortion, executive orders, DEI, health insurance, California wildfires, USAID, and more. Every day it feels like there’s a new thing in the news, a new idea or belief or political act that it’s necessary to have an opinion on.
It’s exhausting.
That being said, why is it that politics affects everything? Shouldn’t large portions of life be relatively free of it? The government shouldn’t affect every aspect of life, surely?
How did we get here?
Two Factors
Big Federal Government
When America was created, the Federal government did a lot less than it does today. Most of the current departments didn’t exist, and the states were the primary polities under which people lived. Local laws governed a larger percentage of a person’s life, and so it was local politics that mattered most.
The arc of the twentieth century changed this in two ways. First, the federal government grew massively compared to local and state governments. The New Deal massively expanded the size of the federal government, and the ratchet effect of government organizations (they’re created but rarely removed) means that the Federal government swelled to the behemoth it is today. Second, the legislature (congress) started delegating more and more power to the executive branch, specifically the Federal bureaucracy (the agencies).
The result of these two trends is that much an individual’s life is decided by the Federal government. When the US began, it was mostly taxes, foreign travel, and military service where a person’s life would intersect with the Fed; now everything from the food we eat to doctor’s visits to the energy that powers our homes is regulated federally. The interest rate that determines whether or not we can afford a mortgage is decided federally. There are Federal standards for education, car emissions, public transit, workplace safety, and more.
While it makes sense to regulate a lot of this Federally, that doesn’t change the fact that everyone’s life is affected by the Federal government to an unprecedented degree. It follows that control of the Federal government has grown more important to the life of the average citizen over time: the more the Federal bureaucracy affects you, the more you want to have a say in what it does. And because more and more power has been vested under the executive branch, control of the executive branch has become ever more important to everyone.
One of the big points of Federalism was that government should be close to home - local government was something that people could actually affect, and it had the largest effect on their lives. That isn’t true anymore. The federal government has so much power that it directly affects everyone, which means that everyone has to fight for control over it.
Activism and Identity Politics
It’s a catchy slogan and an old idea - trying to convince people that there is no neutrality between two sides, no way to stay out of a fight. The problem is that it radicalizes everyone and turns plenty of people into your enemies.
The activism of recent years seemed to be in love with this idea: that not participating, attempting to be neutral or sitting things out, was evil and/or not an option. That you had to pick a side. Silence was violence. Anyone who wasn’t anti-racist was racist.
And so on.
And here’s the thing - maybe the activists were right. Maybe there was no such thing as neutrality. But by purposefully and loudly castigating people for not being involved, it got everyone involved. On one side or the other, everyone got involved, and politics became more salient for everyone, friend and foe alike. If the American public is more politicized now than it was before, well, that’s exactly what activists were trying to accomplish. If more people who would have been uninvolved were pushed into the ‘foe’ camp than the ‘friend’ one by this method, however, it only increases the polarization of the country.
Identity politics are another piece of this story, because identity is tribal, and humans are incredibly attuned to threats to their tribe. Basing politics around race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. makes politics incredibly personal - everyone has a stake because everyone identifies in some particular way. Every political idea becomes connected to who a person is, which makes it impossible to remain unattached to one’s political beliefs.
An example: medical regulations are often arcane and arguably should be handled by experts optimizing for the health of the country. But if those medical regulations affect women or African Americans or transsexuals, then all of a sudden if you’re one of those people a decision made by a dispassionate bureaucrat attempting to act in the best interest of the country becomes a personal attack on who you are.
Identity politics aren’t the source of this issue, but by making someone’s politics a part of their identity you turn political defeats into personal ones, which makes compromise and reasoned discussion far harder.
You Are Not Your Politics
You are a person, not a human-shaped collection of political beliefs. Most of your life is spent interacting with friends and family, doing your job, sleeping, eating, etc. Politics should be relatively distant from all that.
I, personally, enjoy talking about policy ideas from the perspective of an engineer or economist: what will work? What won’t work? Why? What are the optimal policies to produce a given outcome?
Those conversations aren’t acrimonious, because they’re goal-agnostic, and so don’t tend to trigger severe emotional reactions from the people I talk to. But any conversation I have that isn’t framed in those terms tends to be fraught with emotion. People take political differences as personal attacks.
Unless you’re actively engaged in a political campaign, who you are and what you believe politically are two separate things, and you can engage with people who disagree with you without compromising who you are.
Conclusion
We need to invest less of ourselves into our political opinions and beliefs, for our collective sanity. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have those opinions or beliefs; it’s good to be aware of the world and its goings-on, but when the faintest whiff of disagreement becomes infuriating, when any hint that a person believes differently than you becomes a reason to shun them…
Things have gone too far. The toxoplasma of rage has taken over. Politics has become the mindkiller.
Becoming emotional is not actually a solution to any of the problems of our world today. Being angry at those with different beliefs isn’t helpful. Despairing over the state of the country might feel natural but it doesn’t actually fix anything.
I’m not asking anyone to bury their emotions. Feel what you feel. But understand that your feelings are different from the feelings of others, and your beliefs are different from the beliefs of others, and that’s okay.
You are not your politics. You’re so much more than that, and it’s time to act like it.