Politics as the Elimination of the Other

A pre-election call to hope

Photo by TAHA AJMI on Unsplash

As tomorrow looms, I want to draw attention to a dynamic below the particular figures we’ll be voting for or not voting for, and their policies (or “policies,” as it were): something James Davison Hunter has identified as cultural nihilism. What concerns me more than the specific candidate that gets elected tomorrow is the fact that we no longer have the language, desire, or shared values necessary to build consensus, compromise, or what Hunter calls “solidarity.” Put simply, I’m afraid that our culture war politics have brought us to a place where “life together” is unimaginable. But what is imaginable is the elimination of those people. And it seems to me that that is what our politics have been reduced to: an effort to gain power so as to eliminate, coerce, silence, convert, or otherwise negate the existence of those who disagree with us.

Whether it’s a “comedian” at a Trump rally joking about Puerto Rico being “floating island of garbage” or President Biden calling Trump supporters garbage (which he denies, but one could multiply other examples of progressive contempt for Trump voters), there is a general sense from both the right and the left that the very presence of the other side is an existential threat to the nation. It’s not just that we must stop Trump from gaining office; we have to rout out every last Trump supporter or silence them. It’s not just that we must keep Harris from gaining office; we have to expose and silence all these progressives with their woke mind virus. It’s a politics of destruction, of total war. And the natural outcome of this mindset is the dehumanization of the other, which we have seen time and time again the last few election cycles. It’s a politics of despair. We need a politics of hope.