Politics is not an arena to achieve the perfectibility of man, nor is it a means to create utopia.
I have seen politics variously defined as, "who gets what where and when," "the art of the possible" and, "a substitute (like diplomacy) for war." I think of politics as a way one group of people achieves power over another group. I think of it as a system which is reactive, that is in a democracy politics are corrective and rarely forward thinking. We correct our mistakes after the time of waste and suffering rather than proactively and unerringly choose the right path. As emotionally unsatisfying as that may be, that is the virtue of a democracy, it is open and transparent enough so that mistakes can be recognized and eventually corrected.
Leftist utopian societies claim to be in sole possession of the right path but that is a deadly illusion. It is the purest hubris and a hubristic man is virtually incapable of introspection.
Leftward oriented political entities, like Bolshevik Russia, are utterly incapable of recognizing the failures caused by their ideologies, those "mistakes," that rendered the Soviet Union incapable of preventing its own disintegration. The more one group achieves power over another group, the less capable the ascending group is of recognizing it is going down the wrong path. Today as never before in American politics, the ascendant Democrats have hermetically sealed themselves in an ideology which constricts them even as than it oppresses us.
There ideology variously called, critical theory, critical race theory, intersectionality or postmodernism, have so blinded the left that it is incapable of honest introspection. The ideology fits in perfectly with the left's natural inclination: to play God. Under this hermetic seal the situation in America is very grave because the left is more ascendant in power than ever, at least since Franklin Roosevelt, and therefore all the more incapable of self correction.
This is a combination of power and ideology destined to cause grave suffering. Our short-term destiny is to experience politics as naked power rather than the limited exercise of power which we had come to except as our birthright. There can be no relief until there is a new epistemology, until the hermetic seal is broken.
