When Politics Becomes Your Idol
There’s just a whirl of changing stepfathers, changing homes, changing phone distractions, changing pop-culture references, financial stress
and chronic drinking, which make it harder to sink down roots into something, or to even have a spiritual narrative that gives meaning to life.
In the memorable phrase of the psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, idols ask for more
and more, while giving less and less, until eventually they demand everything and give nothing.”
Politics these days makes categorical demands on people.
It should be said that people on the left and on the right who try to use politics to find their moral meaning are turning politics into an idol.
People often use partisan identity to fill the void left when their other attachments wither away — religious, ethnic, communal and familial.
Today, partisanship for many people is not about which party has the better policies, as it was, say, in the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy.