Are We Over-Politicized?
Drowning out the partisan noise
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Dear Matt,
Is politics all there is? Is that all we have left? Will there be no reprieve? Can we ever get past them?
Despondently,
Gina R.
I will answer your questions in order:
A. No.
B. Yes.
C. Maybe.
D. Yes.
And now, I will expand upon these themes, since that’s why you pay me the medium bucks. Unless you’re a free subscriber, in which case, I owe you nothing. Consider yourself lucky that I’m even speaking to you. (Am only kidding, and trying to goad you with tough love. Your token support is the wind beneath my knees, free subscribers. Even if it remains impossible to pay off my kids’ student loans with token support.)
I used to like to think of myself as being mostly apolitical. I mean, as apolitical as you can be for a guy who lives just outside the Beltway, who worked at a political magazine for a quarter of a century, who talked about politics plenty in his spare time with not only colleagues who were in the business of making sense of politics, but also with friends and family, who internalized politics through their reading and listening habits. I used to think I had my life nicely compartmentalized. I had my “politics” friends. But I also had my spiritual friends. My fly fishing friends. My music friends. My imaginary friends, who I have the benefit of talking to without bearing the burden of having to listen to them. (Real friendship is about preserving each other’s illusions. So thanks, Nigel Mumbleton, my imaginary English butler.)
Then, somewhere along the way, everything became overtly political. Sports, entertainment, religion. Preachers of my acquaintance who never seemed to think politics held a candle to the eternal verities in the importance department, all of the sudden were banging on about………trans swimmers? I mean, as J.C. said in the Sermon On The Mount — Slack Tide translation — “WTF?” Blessed are they who are easily distracted, for they shall inherit the news cycle.
But I also noticed a turn in my own behavior.