I think one of the frustrating, damaging things about classical liberalism--and this has been noted before--is that it makes people lie about what they truly believe, in order to achieve majorities and pluralities that wield political power. The system--economic, social, and political--sells people on the idea that electoral legitimacy in itself stands in for deep satisfaction, for all that is good and right. When they've been strategically dishonest for too long, and hope is dashed, and we haven't revisited what our purpose is--much less how to get back there--people get enraged. In short, we're being trained to exchange questions of telos for questions of process.
Notice how different people in the political system talk about ideas they disagree with: "extreme," "outside the mainstream," "out of step with ordinary Americans," etc. We're so used to it, we haven't thought about what it's training us to do: assign moral praiseworthiness to whatever achieves power, and assign moral blameworthiness to whatever doesn't. In fact, this ends up turning all truth claims into merely expressions of preference. It's literally systematic, institutionalized emotivism. The system knows to deal with that, too. The news media has literally commoditized the fact that many people have picked up on this, and refused to affiliate with one side or the other, and so they subsist on writing stories about the mysterious "independents" who could swing the election one way or the other. We don't know anything about those independents and their relationship to the truth of any matter. Frankly, we know less and less about our relationship to the truth on our own side, and less and less about those on the other side. The system does not reward the pursuit of truth.
And I'm not saying that everyone who participates is one of the "sheeple," and "The truth is out there" in some "X Files" conspiracy way. What I'm saying is that, if you participate, prepared to be aware that all parties are selling you a package deal you may not feel comfortable buying. I'm even using consumer language to describe voting! See how pervasive market ideology and consumerism is?
We need to articulate a correct anthropology of being human. We need to be prepared to say, "This statement, policy, program, etc. avoids the fundamental questions" and say it so many times, and in so many directions, that a principled non-participation becomes a live and acceptable option for us.
Politics, they often say, is the art of the possible. The problem is, no one seems to know the ends for which they are pursuing and doing what's possible. This system presents golden means like they are the treasure of El Dorado, and when you open the bag, there's nothing but sand.
For my part, I've been tending to appreciate things that Democrats say, precisely because I hear general rings of truth that my own enculturation had taught me to ignore, or dismiss. Actually, my joining the Republicans in college had a lot to do with rejecting what I heard liberals/progressives said were the preferences of those who supported the Republicans. To at least hear them out, on some sort of neutral ground. I wanted truth, even in this. Even today, if the political system grants no neutral ground upon which to discover the truth, then I must create it myself, even as I rebuild a working philosophy. It's a species of friendship, to listen sympathetically and cooperatively in the pursuit of truth. Bernie Sanders is my friend, to the extent that I have heard the ring of truth in what he says. Marco Rubio, same. And anyone else you could name. Yet admittedly, I have no fixed loyalty to anyone in the system.
Notice how different people in the political system talk about ideas they disagree with: "extreme," "outside the mainstream," "out of step with ordinary Americans," etc. We're so used to it, we haven't thought about what it's training us to do: assign moral praiseworthiness to whatever achieves power, and assign moral blameworthiness to whatever doesn't. In fact, this ends up turning all truth claims into merely expressions of preference. It's literally systematic, institutionalized emotivism. The system knows to deal with that, too. The news media has literally commoditized the fact that many people have picked up on this, and refused to affiliate with one side or the other, and so they subsist on writing stories about the mysterious "independents" who could swing the election one way or the other. We don't know anything about those independents and their relationship to the truth of any matter. Frankly, we know less and less about our relationship to the truth on our own side, and less and less about those on the other side. The system does not reward the pursuit of truth.
And I'm not saying that everyone who participates is one of the "sheeple," and "The truth is out there" in some "X Files" conspiracy way. What I'm saying is that, if you participate, prepared to be aware that all parties are selling you a package deal you may not feel comfortable buying. I'm even using consumer language to describe voting! See how pervasive market ideology and consumerism is?
We need to articulate a correct anthropology of being human. We need to be prepared to say, "This statement, policy, program, etc. avoids the fundamental questions" and say it so many times, and in so many directions, that a principled non-participation becomes a live and acceptable option for us.
Politics, they often say, is the art of the possible. The problem is, no one seems to know the ends for which they are pursuing and doing what's possible. This system presents golden means like they are the treasure of El Dorado, and when you open the bag, there's nothing but sand.
For my part, I've been tending to appreciate things that Democrats say, precisely because I hear general rings of truth that my own enculturation had taught me to ignore, or dismiss. Actually, my joining the Republicans in college had a lot to do with rejecting what I heard liberals/progressives said were the preferences of those who supported the Republicans. To at least hear them out, on some sort of neutral ground. I wanted truth, even in this. Even today, if the political system grants no neutral ground upon which to discover the truth, then I must create it myself, even as I rebuild a working philosophy. It's a species of friendship, to listen sympathetically and cooperatively in the pursuit of truth. Bernie Sanders is my friend, to the extent that I have heard the ring of truth in what he says. Marco Rubio, same. And anyone else you could name. Yet admittedly, I have no fixed loyalty to anyone in the system.
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