Empathy in Politics and the Death of Debate

Has hate won?

8 min read

Just now

I write about politics because they are important, but I hate politics. I read about politics to be informed, but I hate politics. I spend so much energy trying to understand politicians, but, and I want to be clear, I hate politics.

My friends think I love politics despite my protests to the contrary.

Nope.

I concede I love the idea of what politics could be in a more empathetic world. It would actually be a place to debate ideas and come away with two groups having grown.

Sadly, this is not the world we live in.

After a discussion with Skeptical White Male and watching Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein disagree on the Charlie Kirk situation, this seed of a thought sprouted in my mind.

The conversation between Coates and Klein is especially interesting because Klein is struggling with a paradigm shift. He believes in the systems we have set up, and the thought that fair debate isn’t enough disturbs him. Klein says:

“What got built in the second half of the twentith century was much more fragile than I understood, not just the legislation or any of that but the actual sense of what you could and could not do, what we would and would not accept, and I just like…the sense…