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Our toxic politics
“What makes our politics so toxic is both sides think they’re losing,”
A recent (Sept 12) article in The New Yorker detailed the ongoing feud between the long-established conservative writer and evangelical Christian David French and the upstart conservative writer and nascent Catholic Sohrab Ahmari. In the article, French made the following statement:
“What makes our politics so toxic is both sides think they’re losing,”
Worryingly enough, the New Yorker failed to make fine the distinction: was French talking about the specific intra-Right Wing politics that he and Ahmari were — rather nastily — debating? Is there toxicity not just FROM the right, but also, WITHIN the Right?
Or was French attempt to describe the wider array of politics?
As a description of either situation, it sounds profound, but in fact it is frustrating and only superficially accurate summation. It leaves out a crucial detail that also applies to both situations: the side that should be winning is losing and the side that should be losing is only winning because it has no scruples.
While it is true that both sides do think, and act, as though they are losing the political battle, this doesn’t explain the toxicity. Or, put another way, why does either side losing — much less both — have to lead to politics so…
