To Prevent Politics and Reality from Breaking Up, Keep It Local

“Therefore, if we want to ward off a divorce between our political narratives and reality, perhaps the best thing we can do is bring political affairs as close as possible to our lived, everyday realities.”

The relationship between politics and reality has always been—and will always be—fraught. The truth can be a stubborn thing, and citizens, activists, and politicians alike often find that it is in their short-term interest to evade it. It would be somewhat naïve, then, to lament the fact that the public square is rife with lies, half-truths, and bad-faith arguments. That is a given. However, it is fair to worry seriously about our country when the lies, half-truths, and bad-faith arguments—from across the political spectrum—are flying in the face of very basic, inescapable, and unchanging facts of the natural world and human nature.

Some realities are transient; others are eternal. When political factions and movements on both sides of the aisle begin to organize against eternal realities, disaster can ensue.

To cite an obvious example, there is such a thing as human nature. It is in our nature to be neither angels nor demons. We have the capacity to do immense good and to perpetrate immense evil. Housing those two tendencies within ourselves is as human as requiring oxygen to breathe.

A country that has righted itself with this eternal reality would never countenance a phrase like “defund the police.” Such a phrase is not just silly or hyperbolic. After all, some who uttered the phrase assured us that they “mean literally abolish the police.” The intention was explicit. The goals were real, and they evinced a willingness to place politics and a slice of eternal reality at odds with one another.