"In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia." - George Orwell

The politicization of society- insisting every aspect of human life is political - is disastrous on many levels.

Inflation degrades our financial lives but politics degrades our personal lives and makes us worse people. It elevates differences of opinion into weapons and voting into proto-war. It makes us suspicious of our neighbors, given the winner take all, zero-sum nature of Washington edicts. The costs to simple human goodwill & social cooperation are enormous.

Good people are productive and build things- businesses, wealth, institutions, families, technological and scientific advances. They generally are too busy for politics, at least until midlife. Even then they often focus on philanthropy or local matters rather than attempting to influence national affairs (we're talking about the millionaire next door type, not billionaires or generational trust funders).

Bad people, by contrast, can only tear down and destroy. They gravitate toward politics from a young age, naturally seeking power without achievement or ability. They are insatiable in their need to exercise power over other humans, which gives them an explicit advantage over busy productive people.

Which leads us to a dilemma. Doing nothing is an attractive option. It makes sense simply to focus on one's own life, family, and career But when too many good people do this, bad people fill the political void. The result is what we see today in hyper-political America.

This is why "liberty" is not political; it's the absence of politics. Liberty is individuals, families, markets, and civil society-- i.e. life outside the state. The goal is to make politics matter less. But how do we shrink politics down to a manageable size without accepting the political framing that besets us?

There are no easy answers here. But the best summary I've seen of our current situation comes from the estimable & distinctly apolitical @AnthonyEsolen in the current issue of @ChroniclesMag:

chroniclesmagazine.org/featured/cultu…

"The fight is on, whether we like it or not. I do not like it. I have a hundred better and sweeter things to do, and I am growing old. But you cannot win a fight unless you show up. You cannot defeat, by appeals to truth, someone who does not acknowledge truth as the ultimate arbiter. You cannot defeat, by appeals to proper procedure, someone who ditches procedure whenever it is convenient. You cannot defeat, by the evidence of beauty, someone who cultivates the hideous. You can defeat him only by finding him out, checking his advance, exposing his lies or bad faith, revealing his ignorance, holding doggedly on to what scrap of high ground you have managed to attain, and doing all you can to keep him away from any vantage of power or influence. You will be called all kinds of foul and false things. What of it? You will be called those same things anyway, even if you tried, as I did for the better part of 25 years, to mind your own business and let other people alone."

~ Jeff Deist