Have You All Lost Your Minds?

When did political conviction become a substitute for independent thought, and when did disagreement become a moral crime?

I have always found it rather amusing how seriously people take their political affiliations. There is something almost endearing about watching grown adults devote an extraordinary amount of emotional energy to defending politicians who would probably struggle to remember their names, let alone care about their existence. They argue, they protest, they insult strangers on the internet, and occasionally, in a particularly impressive display of intellectual maturity, they end friendships over which political camp someone happens to belong to. All of this for people who have made careers out of telling them exactly what they want to hear.

I suppose, everybody needs something to believe in, but hey, I think we can aim higher.

People disagree about politics. Disagreement is inevitable, and quite frankly, a world in which everyone agreed with you would probably be terribly uneventful, even if it would be considerably more efficient. What is fascinating is the extraordinary faith people place in the idea that their preferred candidate represents some grand departure from everything that came before. There are genuine policy differences between administrations, of course, and some have consequences that should never be dismissed, but the endurance of the political establishment is a rather inconvenient fact for anyone who believes that replacing the person standing behind the podium amounts to reinventing the country.

I do not particularly care whether someone votes Prabowo, Jokowi, Ganjar, Megawati (as long as it’s not Anies), conservative or progressive, left or right. That is their business, and I have never considered the contents of a ballot box a reliable measure of someone's intelligence, character, or moral worth. What bothers me is the increasingly popular assumption that political allegiance is evidence of personal virtue.

Somewhere along the way, people stopped treating their preferred candidates as public servants who ought to be scrutinised and started treating them as moral representatives whose shortcomings must be excused at all costs.

In Politicians We Trust

I recently came across a rather a funny yet truthful wisdom suggesting that worshipping a politician is much like believing a stripper is genuinely in love with you. 

The entire relationship is built on an illusion of intimacy, in which one party has become emotionally invested while the other understands perfectly well that affection, or at least the appearance of it, is part of the business.

It is a funny and cruel analogy, but perhaps political devotion deserves a little cruelty. If a politician can convince millions of people that their personal ambitions are inseparable from the public good, then those millions will willingly become unpaid defenders of a career that was never really theirs to begin with.

And the tragedy is that people surrender their ability to think independently. They inherit a collection of opinions, learn the appropriate vocabulary, memorise the approved enemies, and eventually develop the comforting conviction that everyone who disagrees with them must be either ignorant, malicious, or morally defective. I find it extraordinary how easily people who pride themselves on questioning authority can become so unquestioningly fanatical to their own side.

Perhaps this is why I have begun to think of modern politics as a kind of secular religion.

It offers belonging, identity, moral certainty, and the wonderfully intoxicating pleasure of believing oneself righteous. It has its saints and sinners, its sacred commandments, its rituals of public confession, and its remarkably enthusiastic appetite for excommunication. The only meaningful difference is that the modern heretic is less likely to be burned at the stake and considerably more likely to be unfollowed on Instagram. Progress, I suppose?

Terms & Conditions Apply

I was reminded of this recently when I heard about friendships becoming strained over differing views on LGBT issues, particularly in the wake of the recent Women's March in Indonesia. I have no interest in policing who is allowed to march for what, and I am certainly not suggesting that women or LGBT people should be denied the right to campaign for equal treatment.

What I find peculiar is how quickly the language of tolerance can disappear when the person being tolerated happens to disagree with them, A friend who holds a traditional religious view of marriage is suddenly considered an unacceptable human being, regardless of the kindness, loyalty, and decency they may have demonstrated over years of friendship. We seem to have developed the rather ambitious expectation that everyone in our lives must share not only our affection but our entire moral philosophy.

I understand why certain disagreements can be deeply personal, especially when they concern someone's identity, dignity, or fundamental rights, but I also refuse to believe that every disagreement is an act of aggression, or that every personal conviction must be interpreted as an attempt to control somebody else's life. We are capable of making distinctions, although social media has done a rather impressive job of convincing us otherwise.

The expectation that tolerance must necessarily involve agreement is a fallacy. In fact, agreement requires very little tolerance at all. There is nothing particularly noble about accepting someone who thinks exactly as you do, believes everything you believe, and conveniently confirms your understanding of the world.

The real test comes when someone you respect reaches a conclusion you find difficult to understand, perhaps even profoundly wrong, and you must decide whether that disagreement invalidates everything else you know about them. I would like to think that friendship is more substantial than a collection of compatible opinions.

I find the contradiction especially striking among people who consider themselves progressive, enlightened, and liberated from traditional dogma. Some of the loudest critics of religious intolerance appear perfectly comfortable with their own forms of ideological exclusion.

They reject the idea that religious people should dictate how others live, which is a reasonable position. But here they are, also insisting that everyone around them must express the correct opinions, and demonstrate the correct degree of enthusiasm for their preferred causes.

To be clear, this hypocrisy applies to both sides. The irony is that both groups may be so preoccupied with identifying oppression in the other that they fail to recognise their own appetite for control.

We are all products of different families, histories, cultures, experiences, and circumstances. A person raised in a deeply religious household may understand morality differently from someone raised in a secular environment. Someone who has experienced discrimination may regard certain political questions with an urgency that someone else cannot fully appreciate. Neither perspective emerges from nowhere, and neither should automatically be dismissed as evidence of stupidity. We may challenge one another, argue passionately, and sometimes conclude that our differences are irreconcilable.

But surely we can do so without treating every disagreement as a declaration of war.

History is littered with people who were absolutely certain they stood on the right side of it, including many whose certainty we now regard with embarrassment or horror. This does not mean that all beliefs are equally defensible, or that we should abandon the effort to distinguish justice from injustice. It simply means that righteousness deserves a little humility.

I have changed my mind about enough things in my own life to know that certainty is often just ignorance that has not yet encountered sufficient evidence.

Everybody thinks they are the good guys

I suspect the greatest achievement of modern political tribalism is not persuading people to vote for one candidate over another, but it is persuading them that the act of choosing a side somehow absolves them of the responsibility to think.

Once you have identified yourself as a good liberal, a good conservative, a good feminist, or a good defender of traditional values, the rest becomes remarkably convenient. Your side supplies the arguments, identifies the villains, and reassures you that your indignation is not only justified but virtuous.

You can spend an entire afternoon condemning intolerance while refusing to entertain a conversation with someone who disagrees with you. We have become rather accomplished at advertising our virtues, but I am not entirely convinced that we have become equally accomplished at practicing them.

The Show Must Go On

Meanwhile, the politicians continue with their careers. They attend their fundraisers, negotiate their alliances, defend their compromises, and discover, with extraordinary flexibility, that yesterday's unforgivable enemy can become tomorrow's indispensable partner.

Ordinary people like you and I, however, are expected to remain furious. They are expected to carry political hostilities into their homes, workplaces, friendships, and families, as though the survival of civilisation depends upon their willingness to despise a neighbour with the wrong bumper sticker.

Perhaps that is what I find most depressing about this illusion of choice.

We have turned politicians into objects of devotion, political movements into moral identities, and perfectly ordinary differences of opinion into grounds for personal exile. We behave as though selecting the correct candidate automatically places us among the righteous, when the truth is that a person's character cannot possibly be reduced to the name they mark on a ballot.

I am not arguing against voting, or political engagement, or having principles. Gurl, do your thing.

In fact, I rally for the opposite. I think principles matter enormously, which is precisely why I dislike watching people surrender them to parties and personalities. If you believe in compassion, practice it even when the recipient does not share your politics. If you believe in religious freedom, extend it to beliefs you dislike. If you believe in equality, defend people's dignity without demanding that they become ideological copies of yourself. And if you believe in democracy, accept that the existence of people who disagree with you is not an unfortunate defect in the system. It is part of the reason the system exists in the first place.

I would also like to believe that we can recover some sense of proportion, that every disagreement deserves a ruined friendship, and not every controversial opinion requires a public denunciation. And for god’s sake, not every election is the final battle between good and evil, and not every politician who tells you what you want to hear deserves your loyalty.

At the end of the day, I find the spectacle of political worship rather sad. Here are millions of people, many of them intelligent and well-intentioned, investing their identities, friendships, and emotional well-being in the fortunes of public figures who are, ultimately, human beings with ambitions, weaknesses, contradictions, and interests of their own. Some politicians may genuinely want to improve society, and others may be considerably more interested in improving their careers.

And that’s okay, but let us not be pawns in their game.

The Strippers Will Always Strip

So vote for whoever you want, or don’t vote. Whatever you want.

Be a progressive, a conservative, a feminist, a traditionalist, a believer, a sceptic, or some inconvenient combination that refuses to fit neatly into anybody's political vocabulary. Argue for what you believe in, and argue well. But do not become so enamored with the righteousness of your own position that you forget how to recognize another person's humanity.

Do not mistake disagreement for persecution, or approval for respect. And please, for the love of whatever deity or philosophy you happen to subscribe to, stop treating politicians as though they have descended from heaven to rescue you from the moral inadequacies of everyone else.

The movie will go on. You still have bills to pay. The costumes will change, the dialogue will be updated, and the production house will have another successful season.

If there is one choice I would still like to believe belongs to us, it is the choice not to surrender our judgment, our decency, and our relationships to people who are merely passing through public office. We may not get to write the entire script, but we ought to retain enough dignity to know when someone is performing.

And preferably, enough common sense not to fall in love with the stripper.