The Political Animal or "I wasn't expecting this to be a drunken post, but ..."

I'll be the first to admit it. I've had maybe a little too much wine.

But that's okay. We're allowed that on occasion. It's a human thing.

I've been reading a lot lately. I've been on an American Revolution kick. The Federalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, Democracy in America ... Most of the basics. I've missed out on Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws and Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, but I still have Wood's The Creation of the American Republic to go.

I'm trying to find myself. Lately, I don't even know if that idea even makes any sense. But it's very American. I'm trying to put myself in context.

But, I don't know if I'm that interested in engaging what has become the political culture of the United States anymore. Part of my reason for starting on this course of reading was so that I'd be able to do that more competently. Maybe I'm more interested in being non-partisan than I am in actually disengaging, but I don't know if it's even possible for that to be meaningful in our culture any more.

Aristotle holds that man, by his nature, is political. For him, there is no question of engagement.

But for me, there is, and maybe that speaks to the nature of the democracy we're living in. I wonder how capable normal citizens are of being informed. I wonder if the problem isn't structural rather than personal, and, if it is structural, if the best, most virtuous option isn't simply dropping out of the political theater altogether.

But then I wonder if doing so is simply a misguided effort to avoid grappling with difficult issues. I know that I do believe that the insistence and emphasis on excessive partisanship tends to get in the way of both a comprehensive understanding of the human aspect of political issues as well as the public good in general.

Q writes:

"I count myself as a member of the middle. It isn't the center: it doesn't exist between extremes, and it isn't a pastiche scrounged from bits of ideologies. Like centrism, it is based upon principle, but is realistic. To be in the middle, though, is to step beyond accepting packaged bits of left and right. No one's narrative is large enough to encompass the middle, nor small enough to fit in it. One in the middle believes there are principles that ought not to be compromised, but that no principle can understand humanity like a human can."

This is a sentiment that I am very sympathetic to, but I wonder about the use of principles that are inarticulable. And I wonder if articulable principles are worth a damn to begin with. I am very wary of theory. It tends to flatten all the rough spots of the human condition. It tends to simplify things that shouldn't be simple.

I wonder if the best politics isn't one of direct human engagement, one that rejects the institutionalization of human contact. One that insists on the intimate and close connection of people, unmediated by an inhuman, governing body.

But I don't know if there's room for that within politics today. I don't know if there has ever been room for that in politics anywhere. And I don't know if that's a good enough reason to abandon what it means to be engaged.

We might be aiming at perfection, but I don't think we should expect it. Even if expecting it is a very human sort of thing.