Rejecting the Politics of Despair
Jonah Goldberg on the Mid-term Election
(The Dispatch) Contrary to so many bromides about the glories of unity, democracy is about disagreement. It’s about arguments. It’s about racking up temporary victories and recovering from temporary defeats. Democracy doesn’t deliver permanent solutions or eternal social justice. It’s a hedge against tyranny and a way to settle differences without resorting to the sword. And that’s good enough.
What is most offensive about all of this “this is our last chance” hysteria is its fundamental anti-Americanism. I don’t mean ideological anti-Americanism, which is a real thing with a long pedigree on the left and the right. I mean it is anti-Americans. It is premised on the idea that if our team loses the election, we cannot count on normal Americans not to blindly and obediently go along with tyranny, authoritarianism, communism, fascism, or whatever brand name these faux Martin Niemöllers assign to their political opponents.
This is a good country full to the rafters with decent people. Are we perfect? Of course not. Have we sinned in the past? Obviously. But if you actually believe in democracy, you have to believe that Americans can correct their errors. That’s the story of America after all. Jim Crow was evil. We had a huge, messy, and grueling democratic argument about it, punctuated by numerous elections. And like a sifting pan clearing away the dross, we finally elected to get rid of it democratically. The better argument won.
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Indeed, that is the politics of despair. In Christian teaching, despair is among the gravest of sins because it is the willful rejection of the idea that personal redemption is possible. The politics of despair promotes the idea that national redemption is impossible if we lose the next election. What I said to the right in 2016 is as true for the left in 2022 (and for both in 2024): If we’re one election away from America being over, then America is already over.
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The core problem with American politics today is that a large number of people have become convinced that elections aren’t for eliminating problems, they’re for eliminating our “enemies.” Each election is pitched by partisans as our last chance to stop or purge our existential foes before they go about destroying the country or, as Joe Biden once put it, “putting y’all back in chains.” And once elected, each side thinks this is their last chance to get everything they want all at once, which all but guarantees the American people will put the other team back in power to punish their overreach.
It’s hard enough to eliminate problems. Usually, modest improvements are the best you can hope for. But it’s impossible to eliminate whole categories of people in democracy. If you take to heart that the other team isn’t going away—and that maybe, just maybe, some of them are decent people—you will change your politics accordingly. It’s much easier to be a jackass to a stranger you will never see again than to a neighbor or coworker you’re going to see every day.
If despair is the sin of losing hope for the possibility of personal redemption, the politics of despair is the sin of losing hope that democracy is up to the task of righting itself. And once you believe that, you give yourself permission to do terrible things and to be a terrible person—so long as you are terrible toward your enemies.
Have some faith in your country and your stated ideals. Have some faith in the Constitution and your fellow Americans. I’m not arguing for complacency. I’m arguing against panic and despair. Despair is a sin because it forecloses any notion that you can do anything to climb out of it. That’s not the American way. That’s not the democratic way. Freedom takes work. It takes commitment to defending ideals that can only die when people stop defending them.