by Micah Tillman

Why are we cynical about politics? I finally learned the answer in last night’s debate: Our politicians attack each other. It’s the “tit-for-tat” campaigns.

Saith Obama.

It’s not that we’ve given up on trying to find an honest politician. It’s not that politicians don’t know how to spend the money their minions would take from us if we weren’t too scared to pay ahead of time — even as they give us lectures on living beyond our means.

It’s not that politicians wrack up carbon footprints the size of all outdoors while telling us to inflate our tires, to feel guilty about flatulent cows, and to use ethanol.

No. It’s the fact that they find each other unlikable and treat each other as such.

We just can’t understand why politicians wouldn’t love politicians, since we normal people do. That’s why we’re cynical. Their attitude towards each other makes no sense to us, and so we think it must be just a front.

Right.

Here’s why we’re actually cynical:

I

We’re cynical because politicians spend so much time promising us change when we know there’s nothing new under the sun. Things have always been the way they are now; and they always will be.

History makes no permanent progress and suffers no permanent regress. Hegel and Fukuyama and Marx and Bush are all wrong.

Freedom is not on the march any more now than it ever has been. Neither capitalism nor communism nor democracy nor tyranny is anything new, none of them is dead, and none of them is the future.

And government is not now, nor has it ever been, the answer to any question other than, “What’s the best tool for destroying things?”

There’s nothing special about us or our place in history; we’re not conceited enough to think otherwise, even if politicians want us to be. We are not the ones we’ve been waiting for, and we know it.

And no politician is or ever will be the one we’ve been waiting for either.

II

But what can a politician understand of humility? We’re cynical because politicians want power so much they’re willing to devote their lives, their spouses’ lives, and their children’s lives to getting it.

They want power so much they’re willing to burn fossil fuels traveling the country (against the dictates of their pro-environment and anti-oil consciences) begging people for enough money to buy it.

And yet they claim to care about the little guy.

No man can serve two masters. You can’t devote your life to power and serve the powerless at the same time.

III

We’re cynical because we’ve been burned, over and again. We’ve learned to expect even the “good” politicians to eventually be exposed.

They always are.

The greats of the past, whom we were raised to revere, eventually turn out to have been secretly evil. Just wait for the next biography of your favorite historical character.

You won’t be disappointed.

Or rather, you will be.

And so we’ve given up on taking any appearance of high goodness in a politician seriously.

All legacies end in ashes. The skeletons eventually come out. The alternative histories get written.

We all know this. And we know the politicians who spend so much time trying to get us to believe in their legacies know this.

So we’ve learned to see politics as a game — a game which everybody eventually loses.

___

Live it up, then, Dear Politicians. Tit-for-tat to your hearts’ content. We’ll try really hard to act surprised and offended.

We know our role.

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America