American presidential races, White House press briefings, and national conventions can barely be considered Politics. More accurately, they can be regarded as Current Events. Actual Politics are timeless. The two poles, Liberalism and Conservatism, are evolutionary survival strategies that have existed and competed for power inside groups of humans forever.
In its simplest form, the eternal rift between left and right is defined as the impulse to change (liberate) society versus the impulse to honor (conserve) it. Liberals protect those at the bottom of hierarchies, Conservatives protect the hierarchies themselves. Liberals do not believe in firm lines between right and wrong. Their minds are open and ready to change when presented with new evidence. Conservatives, on the other hand, leverage lines. They neatly bucket good from evil based on traditional teachings of the authority responsible for their protection. Liberals seek novelty, diversity, and fluidity. They stand up for the weak and oppressed even at the risk of causing societal chaos. Conservatives like safety, dependability, and structure. They believe peaceful order is very hard to achieve, and because it is so precious it should be conserved and preserved.
The Issues
Left and right are eternal forces because they have to be. They help us sort out eternal social issues. The political debates we’re having are the same ones that have been debated, at varying scales and degrees, since humans organized themselves into groups. Take the border, for example. One can imagine the conservatives in a pre-historic tribe prioritizing in-group security. Perhaps even wanting a physical wall to protect the tribe from invasion. The liberals, on the other hand, might view a wall as unnecessarily isolationist. They might argue on behalf of people outside the tribe trying to flee unsafe living conditions and that the tribe would benefit from new, diverse perspectives.
Starting with education, let’s map two more modern social issues onto pre-historic humans. Tribal conservatives would want their children to learn traditional values. To sing the hymns of religion and reinforce the tribe’s history and principles year after year. Tribal liberals are a bit harder to predict. Their relationship to education is fluid. In fact, one generation might remove formal education altogether after finding classes, grades, or rankings to be unfair, suffocating systems of oppression. For the third issue, let’s take weapon control. The conservative tribe would be mistrustful of the governing body. They believe individuals have the right to organize against the group and protect themselves if the group begins acting insane. The liberal tribe is mistrustful of the individual. They believe in the power and wisdom of the collective to administer and control violence.
The most important feature of the eternal political forces is that one cannot exist without the other. They are like yin and yang, too much yin or too much yang and the whole thing-thang disappears. Watch what happens when our three social issues are played out in wholly conservative or liberal tribes.
Two Tribes
Borders in the far-right tribe are completely closed to outsiders. Only those with pure, hereditary blood are welcome and worthy of full citizenship. The conservative tribe, unwilling to even harbor refugees, remains trapped in its own little bubble. Isolationism and prejudice are provoked further in the way their youth are educated. From an early age, they are taught that they are the chosen people and their god is superior to all the other gods. For centuries they’ve believed that two children, aged 12 or 13 depending on the number of moon cycles that year, must be sacrificed to the great Sun God for crops to grow. When a student suggests that the Sun God is not responsible for growing plants, but rather a process she calls photosynthesis she is treated as a witch and burned at the stake. The Sun God would never lie, witch! The right to bear arms in the conservative tribe is unregulated. Privileged members of society use their unequal access to resources to arm themselves with technology unavailable to the lower classes. Like the Dutch East India Company, they’re allowed to organize personal armies to control the flow of goods in surrounding tribes. As the privileged families grow they gain grossly disproportionate power and influence in the community.
The left-leaning tribe is no better off. They have no border. No guards. Nothing separates them from any other group of humans. They are easily infiltrated and overrun by well-organized invasions. Their education system is not a system. Historically, students who have understood and harnessed the power of mathematics have used it to get ahead of their peers. Not all students understand math equally and the liberal tribe doesn’t accept inequality of any kind. Anyone who teaches math to their children is deemed classist, racist, and possibly even sexist. Everyone is the same! To ensure they have equal access to self-defense, only the governing body is allowed weapons of any kind. Without weapons, there is nothing for the average citizen to worry about. The governing body will never, ever, ever abuse its power (see Mao’s China or Stalin’s Soviet Union).
Modern Politics
The biggest lie in American political life is that liberals and conservatives hate each other. That politically unaligned Americans cannot exist in the same space without attacking one another is not true. Everyone knows we need each other. Everyone knows that if we eliminate half of our political representation we’ll end up living in fascist or communist hell. What people are referring too when they say America is a hot-bed for political rage is the Democratic and Republican Parties.
The Democratic and Republican Parties are mutations on the timeless political forces. Democrat does not mean Liberal. Democrats in 2024 are lobbying for war and protecting Big Pharma. They are not the party for the working class, they are the party for highly-educated aristocrats. Republican does not mean Conservative. It is not the party of traditional Christian values. Its leader in 2024 is Donald Trump and Donald Trump does not care, nor has never cared, about upholding Judeo-Christian morals and ethics. When in power, Republican presidents do not have a history of reducing government spending. In fact, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump are responsible for three out of the four largest budget deficits in U.S. history.
Democrats tear down border walls because Republicans shouldn’t get credit for rational immigration policy. Republicans repeal abortion laws because Democrats shouldn’t get credit for protecting women’s rights. Democrats and Republicans are locked in competition. They do not want to see each other succeed.
Competition is an exciting, dramatic escape from reality and we’ve been convinced that we are in a permanent one with half the country. When we compete, we don’t just want to win, we want to see the other side fail. Competitions are zero-sum games. When the other side does well, it hurts us.
Bad marriages are competitive, zero-sum games too. In a bad marriage, when Spouse A gets a job in a new city, Spouse B doesn’t support and embrace the challenge. Spouse B doesn’t try to make new friends or step out of their comfort zone because they don’t want the move to be successful. They mope around exuding negative energy and reminding Spouse A that they are the cause of all Spouse B’s anxiety. When it’s time to get a house, Spouse B gets what they want. The house is bigger and more expensive than Spouse A is willing to spend. Spouse A takes it out on Spouse B by no longer taking them to dinner, buying gifts, or going on vacations. What else does Spouse B need? They got a whole damn house. After years of penny-pinching, Spouse A decides to buy a sportscar putting the household into a new stratum of crippling debt and continuing the battle of zero-sum chess moves between two competitors.
Unfortunately, this is where we are as a nation. We are so caught up in competition that we ignore actual politics. All of our political capital is spent destroying the reputations of our fellow countrymen.
Since you’ve made it this far, I will treat you to my interpretation of the 2024 Presidential candidates. If there was a pie chart with Donald Trump’s words, 80 percent of it would be black to represent the most outlandish, ridiculous lies a politician has ever spoken and 20 percent of the pie chart would be white, to represent honest, candid observations about the inner workings of Washington career politicians wouldn’t dare share with the public. A pie chart of Joe Biden’s words, on the other hand, would be 100 percent grey. Everything that Joe Biden says and does is filtered through a team of party members motivated by their own agendas. Perhaps the best example of this is what gets published to the candidates’ respective social media accounts.
If either candidate was sat at a table with my friends and me, I would imagine two very different experiences. Trump would have the occasional funny dig, but by having him at the table we also run the risk of him saying something derogatory and demeaning and possibly getting us kicked out. Biden, on the other hand, wouldn’t be able to follow the conversation or comment on anything outside of party talking points. Inviting someone that vanilla to dinner is almost pointless.
Please note, none of these observations about the candidates have anything to do with Politics.
Thanks for reading! Respond to this email or text me your Political thoughts. Iron sharpens iron.
See you in two weeks!
-Dev
P.S.
*This post was written before the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. However, I wouldn’t change much of what I wrote as it does not appear that the shooter was “politically" motivated. It seems that he was an isolated, insecure male who wanted to get attention by killing the most powerful person he could get close to.
**This post was written before the announcement that someone will take Biden’s place on the Democratic ticket. If it is Kamala Harris, you could swap her name in for Joe’s and I wouldn’t change anything of what I said except she’d at least be able to follow our dinner conversation.