Pratical Politics

Politics is the social process of arranging and producing either permanent or temporary agreements between people–in the long-term or short-term– so that those people can reasonably and more or less peaceably live together in groups such as tribes, cities, or countries, and work out their differences about the division of the social resources that are available without one or the other of the groups resorting to sheer violence to force its view onto the other groups. In medium to large groups, the people who spend the majority of their time either making or maintaining those agreements by which people will either govern themselves or be governed are called politicians.
To be sure, politics is not physical combat—although politics is competitive. Politics produces the social rules and the maintenance of those rules among the people who chose them. When those rules break down or are willfully violated by some members of a society, combat, death and destruction can occur in the process of producing a new arrangement and rules or in the restoration of old ones.
In this election season in the USA, there are those who seem hellbent on changing this definition of things into the phrase politics equals combat. More than mere differences of opinion on decisions about social issues—should the wealthy have to pay more in taxes than they currently do, should men determine whether women can choose to give birth or not, should the social benefits of this society be shared reasonably with other, more needy societies, etc.—these questions may require guns in the streets and physical assassinations to determine.
Again, that’s not politics, that’s combat. To be sure, sustained combat may have occurred in the past to establish the current political relationships and political roles, but short of a major breakdown in the operation of those relationships and roles, in this political season what we have is a renewal of political competition, not political combat.
Surely, in America’s past there have been violent assassinations, a wrenching civil war and street combat by opposing forces in order for one side or the other to gain an advantage. But those have been interruptions in the political process rather than the destruction of the process. America’s constitutional political process has held.
This year, one side of the competing political forces seems to be hellbent on provoking more political violence, smoke and mayhem than allowing a mere contestation of political views about how to govern. That generally means not only more mortal blows to the public’s confidence in its own political system, that also means a public loss of confidence in moving forward.
There is political competition between the Democrats and the Republican parties. There will be winners in that competition just as surely as there will be winners and non-winners in the international Olympics competition which is also being held this year. Though the combativeness in words, memes and possibly rifle shots may rise to the headlines one time or the other, there will be political victors at the end of the process, not another civil war.
We must remember that.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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