Politics expires with lack of compromise. Becomes religion, ideology, gridlock

[UTUSN]

Today the MEACHAM dude (from Newsweek, does it still exist?) said on the Scabs-suspension circus something actually insightful, although not original. Usually, he is notable only for being a smug, self-satisfied elitist.

So, (paraphrasing) he said that politics stops being politics when the attitude becomes last-defender-at-the-barricades, all or nothing, no compromise, demonizing of the enemy. He said that politics is a process of working out solutions, the root of the word being “city.” That when it all becomes scorched earth, it becomes RELIGION or ideology, not politics.

As for the part about this not being original, it was either GIBBON or some other historian who said that the Ancients with their pantheism had an attitude of accommodation, even courtesy, a yieldingness in their interactions with others and other cultures and were stymied and nonplussed, didn’t know what to make of the Jews with their monotheism, the inflexibility (“stiff neck”? Their own self-description) that worked to bring things to a standoff.

[Fumesucker]

1. I don't think we have any worries about that happening with Obama. n/t.

[UTUSN]

2. I think he was talking about the 'Baggers & other wingnuts, I said, demonizingly. n/t