Against Politics

If Barack Obama loses the presidential election, some say , the youth will never get over it. They will lose faith in politics.

This prediction is meant to be grim, but I think it among the better reasons to hope Barack Obama loses. Not to trade in tired truisms, but I must repeat what seems to me the plain fact: The political process of a modern state is not the proper object of “faith” in any very strong sense.

Certainly, it is good that we have shown ourselves capable of acting for goals transcending the desires of our notoriously imperial postmodern Selves. And of course it is a relief to see that the desire for communal aspiration and effort is not dead. But a state containing three hundred and fifty million people spread out across an unthinkably vast stretch of land is a “community” only in an analogous sense. It’s not something you can put your whole heart into, or stake your happiness on. The only associations that deserve and repay that kind of investment are the ones that are in such bad shape: our families and churches. The sooner my generation learns this lesson, the better.

The danger, of course, is that we will retreat into vapid distraction and anxious jostling for money and prestige. But these things are plainly empty and cannot satisfy. In the end they must drive us back to the old, solid sources of meaning and community. It is better to shorten the exile by destroying any hope of consolation from false gods like politics.