One day, to my disgruntlement, I got into an argument with a friend about politics. I think it’s a good idea for me to jot my perspective down, mostly because I’m still upset that he didn’t actually listen to me, partly because it illustrates how mass media affects our ability as citizens to function as part of the US government by/of/for the people, partly because I think that a clear nondualistic political perspective is both uncommon and powerful.

Before I go on, I want to say that my friend’s perspective/attitude is very human, and I don’t intend this as an attack on him. Although the way he treated me and probably changed his opinions of me hurt my feelings, I still want to be his friend. I just want him to see me and where I’m coming from, to be open to the big picture rather than just be another person ricocheting in narratives of political dualism that have attempted to take over our country’s self-image. I was disappointed that he was unreceptive to moral philosophy, because that would represent a change in his personality over time. It is hard for me to be myself around people who don’t care for critical reflection and philosophical conversations. I think he’s open to it, he has always appreciated breaking out into new layers of higher wisdom, he’s just gotten into a groove in the past few years of trying to protect himself and his family from the onslaught of risks and apparent radicalism initiated by COVID. He’s still avoiding “clouds of germs” in his imagination. He would rather mask up and avoid conversation with an alternative perspective than risk the infection by way of exposure.

My friend was surmising that the political far right in the US is defunct, led by a gang of narrow-minded, violence-loving hicks. Of course, my memory is blurring the situation, but essentially, it seemed he had a hard time seeing there are political extremists in any and all directions, and that political ideology is dangerous regardless of whose ideology it is. True to form, I latched onto this and wouldn’t let go, and I still won’t let go. I was countering with the position that the idealism of the political left he shares in is actually causing additional fragmentation, and that compromise and a temporary suspension of one-sided judgment is necessary to see the current state of US politics for what it is, that the US has always swung between centralization and decentralization of power, and that the Democratic aim to centralize power to an oligarchical bureaucracy has its risks just as the Republicans who want to loosen bureaucracy and lean into somewhat authoritarian figures has its risks. He even asked me if political progressives have ever caused mass suffering like the alt-righters fear. I furiously answered, “What about Communism in the USSR and China? Those were based on progressive social justice values, and they caused mass-scale atrocities, genocides, extermination of cultures and mass-mind-control of human diversity. We should not give too much power to central government, because power-hungry people hide behind social causes.” His ears were stuffed to this. He could only imagine a giant inflatable Donald Trump trying to take over the world. He could not admit to himself that the alt righters have a point.

My friend’s perspective was that people who would react against the progressive social values of the Democrats were simply violent bigots to begin with and the behavior of Democrats is not to blame for that. The alt right is not a backlash to the unconscious ideology of the Democrats. He was talking to me like I was a representative for the alt right. I was stunned. I became very upset with him, precisely because it is clear as day to me that when you have political polarization and caricaturization of opposition groups, you increase tension and violence. Moderation and cooperation, listening and discussion are what decrease violence. The roots of violence always begin before the violence emerges. Inward violence and outward violence are one thing in different phases. That’s just how dualisms work. If you cut people off for being different, you have committed murder in your heart. That’s what Jesus and Buddha and pretty much all the prophets taught, anyway. This perspective holds a lot of force, and rejecting it risks putting yourself in contradiction with the sages of the ages. In this case, I was arguing that some of the radicalism displayed by the alt-right are acting as a reactive force to the idealism of highly progressive Democrats. If you reject someone and won’t listen to them, they get mad, and if you start forcing them to do things they don’t agree to, they get rebellious and try to break the system down. Social control causes rebellion, doesn’t matter who’s in power. That’s what’s happening with the alt right. They don’t want to see someone else’s morality forced into law with tons of hierarchy and regulation, and they are resorting to their violent tendencies to provide themselves with a sense of security.

If my friend was speaking from the platform of the Republicans, saying that the Democrats are all bad and are causing all sorts of problems in our country, I would have played devil’s advocate in just the same way. And given that he was missing my nondualism when I was playing devil’s advocate for the alt right, he probably would have done the same if I was playing devil’s advocate for the socialists and called me a pretentious liberal. I would have pointed out all the good that the Democrats’ efforts attempt to accomplish. How demographic inequity is real, how generational trauma is real, how gender diversity is not really a threat, how the second amendment is not in the ten commandments. I have a decisively moderate position. I am fond of both libertarianism and socialism. That’s a weird perspective to have, it’s not one that sells well on television, even if it is humane. I think both liberatarianism and socialism have their use cases, their pros and cons. And that’s the beauty of the American system. We have city folk and country folk, each with their preferred style of government involvement. Cities need regulation, countryside doesn’t. The electoral college was established for just this reason, even if it has been a mess ever since. I see both sides.

For playing devil’s advocate, my friend seemed to see me as an alt-right member. I was very upset by his willingness to project his imagined enemies onto me. He wouldn’t listen to moral philosophy based in the very scriptures he attests to, how Jesus brought together pro-Roman tax collectors (Matthew) with violent Jewish anti-Roman insurgents (Simon the Zealot), he made them sit together and learn to live with each other. He didn’t give any quick solutions to their tensions. The apostle Paul had to deal with the same problem in culturally unifying liberal Gentiles with conservative Jews. Again and again, Paul’s gospel was of a spiritual love that transcends demographic categories. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female—for you all are one in Christ Jesus.” You can pull similar teachings out of Taoism or Buddhism, about how the existence of desire creates tension with what is undesired, and the cessation of desire gets rid of the suffering that goes with it—albeit these traditions are less emphatic on scripture so it’s harder to find quotable texts. I remember how incessantly my friend emphasized my wrong. I wasn’t trying to get him to support violence, I wasn’t even trying to make a Republican out of him—I was trying to get him to see political dualism as a spectrum rooted in age-old moral philosophy and all my values passionately spilled over in defense of the alt right, which made me look ever more like the bad guy. Would Jesus have defended his enemies, listening to their perspective and trying to understand and learn, or would he have taken a side and chastised the other side for its flaws? Does the Buddha vote for Democrats or does he laugh and vote for no one? Wisdom always searches for the truth, even if it is convoluted.

Sometimes it is useful to play into people’s negative fantasies about you. If you purposefully act like how someone imagines you are, they grab onto their fantasy and start attacking it. Meanwhile, you walk away, knowing they weren’t looking for the real you.


June 5th, 2023
Gorda, California