Your politics are the ugliest thing about you. We've lost the wisdom that you should feel a little bit ashamed of your political urges. Like sex, politics are best discussed in hushed whispers with your husband or wife, or maybe a close friend.
We have a word for someone who forces sex into a place where it doesn't belong: a pervert. We understand that a pervert is someone who allows their lust to control them.
When you force politics into a place where it doesn't belong, you are allowing your lust to control you—your lust for power. We don't have a word for someone who does this, probably because we're all guilty of it on some level. We all feel the "political urge" to use every available opportunity to bemoan the other tribes' stupidity, to commiserate about their cruelty, and to brag about the correctness of our own opinions.
Your politics are not special. Political urges do not come from some high seat of self-actualized intellect in your mind. They're spasms from the dark recesses of your brain, just like the urge to reproduce. Political urges are driven by the all-too-human desire to matter. To be important in the eyes of our tribe. In this way, we're all susceptible to the current political mood. Consider: what prompted your latest bout of political ideation? Did you catch an attention-grabbing headline? Was it on the front page of Reddit? Maybe a popular Instagram reel? A Twitter post? Is your political mood coming from your own unique thoughts, or the whims of algorithms and mass media playing on your emotions?
Your politics are impotent. We're encouraged to fly flags in our usernames, to cram epithets into our bios, to walk through life with our allegiances on our sleeve, to sharpen and reinforce the friend-enemy distinction, and to always comment on, react to, and repost the latest controversy. All these forms of political expression amount to little more than exercises in Onanism. We do these things because we want to improve society, yet this eternal state of outrage only makes us feel more miserable. Society will not change from you running your errands in a state of nonstop political arousal and constantly venting your frustrations to the world. This is not healthy. This is not normal.
Your politics are, unfortunately, ugly. Most political expressions look more like a thirteen-year-old's dick drawing than the statue of David. But like other base desires, the lust for power can be sublimated into something more generative. I do not condemn anyone writing The Federalist Papers or engaging in thoughtful, productive civic action. But we must proceed with caution. Lust for the political tempts us into making far more dick drawings than Davids. Like a vulgar doodle, your ugly political outburst not only relegates itself to life's margins, but also distracts from life's substance.
Your politics are ugly, but your politics are not you. You are much, much more than your politics.