It is telling that Mitch Daniels, lifelong politician, doesn't understand politics and doesn't want people taking it seriously. /1
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His lofty perch, in which he can't imagine people taking politics seriously enough to fight about, is probably the result of the fact that he is insulated from--or the beneficiary of--the consequences of the actions of Trump and the GOP. /2
Daniels' offers a cramped conception of "civility," which reflects a lack of empathy for the many people who are not insulated or beneficiaries of Trump era politics, but it's victims. /3
It is telling that Daniels is much more worked up about the "vile practice" of shaming political figures in "restaurants or even in their homes," than he is about child separation, for example, which goes unmentioned in this piece./4
His discussion of the "root causes" of incivility are telling because they reflect his own deeply ideological worldview, which he presents as apolitical common sense. This is almost always the move of politically powerful people who denounce the "politicization" of daily life/5
Root cause number, according to Daniels is, "The intrusion of a sprawling, nosy federal government into seemingly every corner of American life." But wait, Mitch, I thought (according to your own headline) that we were supposed to "set politics aside" this holiday season?/6
Note that Mitch doesn't mention corporations like Facebook or Google that are also "sprawling" and "nosy" and have intruded "into seemingly every corner of American life." /7
Daniels doesn't spell out what he means by "the politicization of cultural issues and culturalization of public debate" which have forced "politics onto the table with the gravy and mashed potatoes." But I can't think of a time when "cultural issues" were not "politicized." /8
I take this sense of "politicization" to mean an interpretation of "cultural issues" that makes him uncomfortable or that challenges his preconceptions (which he takes to be apolitical). /9
And then there is his jawdropping claim that the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Great Recession didn't provoke arguments that spoiled "millions of holiday gatherings." Really? /10
Daniels concludes by artificially separating the personal and the political, which leads him to see these realms as distinct rather than mutually reinforcing./11
He writes, that the "joys or the difficulties of marriage, children, personal health, career...will have more to do with our happiness at home than whether the Democrats hold on to Virginia’s 7th District or the exact amount of the minimum wage." Where to begin? /12
Our ability to find fulfillment in the matters that Daniels defines as strictly personal or familial are connected to politics: i.e.: The amount of the "exact amount minimum wage" (stagnant for more than a decade) is not some abstract matter, unconnected to family life. /13
Politics in the era of Trump is literally a matter of life or death for many Americans (and others around the world) and also for our planet. It precisely involves things of "truly permanent consequence" that Daniels tries to hive of political meaning. /14
Daniels' effort to separate politics from what "matters most" is itself a deeply political strategy, Just because he is privileged enough to lack self-awareness about this does not mean that we should not point this out. /15
