One of the most painful realities of this seemingly interminable political season has been witnessing, and feeling, the rise of rancor and frustration toward our family, friends, and neighbors who think so differently than we do about this or that political issue, or this or that political candidate. This is not unique, nor is it as bad as it has ever been. We’re not anywhere near Bleeding Kansas or brother against brother. But still. There are, were, normal rhythms of electoral disagreements and political bickering and partisanship in American politics. 

“As long as we are thinking of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economies, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of the spirit. Collective activities are, of course, necessary, but this is the end to which they are necessary.”
— C.S. Lewis, “Membership” in The Weight of Glory

One of the most painful realities of this seemingly interminable political season has been witnessing, and feeling, the rise of rancor and frustration toward our family, friends, and neighbors who think so differently than we do about this or that political issue, or this or that political candidate. This is not unique, nor is it as bad as it has ever been. We’re not anywhere near Bleeding Kansas or brother against brother. But still. There are, were, normal rhythms of electoral disagreements and political bickering and partisanship in American politics. There are, or have been, limits. We have a build-up and an election and the arguments and the political fighting and then . . . things settle down somewhat even as we know there’s another wave building, on its way out in the deep. Thanksgiving can be awkward around the table, but by Christmas we’re good.

But those limits feel like they’ve been stretched, broken, and obliterated during this season, starting with the 2016 presidential election and most recently with the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The latest exclamation point is Hillary Clinton’s statement that Democrats should give up on civility. President Trump is not known for his civility either. It is not just that we cannot see why our friend or family member supports a particular candidate or position. It’s deeper than that. It’s an inability to fathom such support coupled with a deep-seated fear that perhaps we don’t really know this person, that we cannot really like this person. That, deep down, we find in ourselves a mix of loathing and incomprehension battling with what our better instincts tell us should be our natural affection for friends and family.

This gets to one of the take-aways from the Lewis quotation above. Lewis was, among many other things, an Aristotelian. Yet his quotation is both Aristotelian and strikingly anti-Aristotelian. It’s anti-Aristotelian in that Lewis didn’t think getting involved in “politics” was inherently wrapped up in what it means to live a flourishing human life. Aristotle did, though his polis differed a great deal from our public square. Politics, Lewis thought, is purely instrumental, and this is his version of Aristotle at work. Politics is not an end or telos in itself; it’s a means. It’s what allows for the truly good things in life, like reading a good book, drinking a craft beer with a friend, or eating a family meal. When working properly, politics is like your electric company or internet service provider. You don’t think about it that much, because you’re more interested in what it allows you to do; you think about it a great deal when your power goes out or your internet goes down. Hence Lewis’s quip from that same “Membership” essay that a “sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion.” One doesn’t have to completely accept that politics is essentially instrumental to appreciate the point. To the extent that we allow political differences to seep in and toxify our relationships with friends, family, and even citizens sharing the same neighborhood, we have allowed what is instrumentally valuable (politics) to poison what is intrinsically valuable (people, relationships).

Why do we do this? Political scientists have been working on this question of increased polarization in recent times, finding ways to describe and measure an increase in strong partisan identification while noting the extinction, more or less, of blue dog Democrats and moderate Republicans. And there are surely several factors that have contributed to what feels like an increasingly severe divide, or divides, in our culture, whether because a Protestant-Catholic-Jew synthesis of American identity has fractured and we’re unsure what will replace it, and/or because we now fight more about incommensurable ends of the sort we see in the beginning of Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue rather than the means by which to achieve agreed-upon goals.

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