The scene’s all too familiar.

You’re gathered around the dinner table with your family, glancing around at faces you haven’t seen in months. You’re simply ecstatic to be in the same room as everybody – the era of FaceTime and text conversations have disappeared for the time being.

Everything seems to be going smoothly. That is, of course, until someone asks:

“Did you see what Trump said yesterday?”

If there’s one thing that’s inevitable come holidays, or any sort of family gathering, it’s the discussion of politics. And despite being on the tip of everyone’s tongue, it’s a wildly unpopular topic.

Almost 50% of Americans have stopped talking about politics because it makes them uncomfortable. 58% of Republicans and 60% of Democrats say that talking politics with someone they disagree with is increasingly anxiety-ridden.

Yet, if we look closer, the numbers don’t say that we want to stop talking about politics in general – we want to stop talking with those we disagree with. We want to stop crossing political boundaries. We want to stop debating.

It’s indicative of the one assumption that we’ve constructed and proudly proclaimed: politics are synonymous with morality. Those who you align with (and vote with) are good, upstanding people, and those you don’t align with are morally inferior. Those who share your views are kind and respectful, while those who don’t are evil and terrifying.

It’s an assumption that we’ve come to live and govern our social spheres by. We’re less likely to become friends with those of opposing views, less likely to date a conservative as a liberal, and less likely to hire those of the opposing party in the workplace. Just take look at these quotes from this NPR article, where people discuss some of these political interactions with friends:

“Dude, I’m done. Lose my number.”

“If this is your attitude, we can’t be cool anymore.”

“It made me sick. If this is his core ethics, I don’t want that kind of person in my life.”

To an extent, it seems ridiculous. Is this really the case? Should we really be unfriending people just because of their political affiliations? And why are we assuming that just because they hold these views that they’re nasty people?

Over the years, I couldn’t help but think that this view was extreme. That if I ended up getting in a political argument with one of my closest friends, I wouldn’t block them from my phone. That I wouldn’t not date somebody if they voted for a different candidate than me.

Yet, it’s grown increasingly unpopular (see here, here, and here). Nobody wants to think of their political opponents as “good people”. Nobody wants to be nice to them in Twitter comments. Nobody wants to separate political statements from moral statements.

However, there’s a crucial distinction between the two:

A political statement, either verbal or non-verbal, proclaims your support for a certain political ideal, candidate, or ideology. These are expressions of your beliefs regarding public policy, power, and governance in a certain state, subsequently informing your preference for how society should be structured, how resources should be allocated, who should attain power, etc.

A moral statement, on the other hand, is a claim that something is morally good or bad, right or wrong, and that there is usually a morally superior alternative. These are statements of ethical beliefs, typically grounded in religious or cultural upbringings, that attempt to determine what is morally acceptable conduct on an individual and societal level.

It’s important to note, however, that both are normative statements. Both political and moral claims are attempts to describe how things should be and how we should act, rather than descriptive claims about how things are around us.

Yet, this is where the similarities stop and the problems begin. Inferring morality from politics or vice versa leads to a plethora of failures and extremities that we overlook practically every day.

Let’s use this fictional comment from “Jane” to “Alice” as an example: ‘I voted for Trump so he could shut down the border.’

The political claims made by Jane are that: 1) she voted for Trump in the previous election, and subsequently prefers him to any other candidate, and 2) she prefers stricter border policies, which informs the fact that 3) they are not in support of increased immigration.

Alice then uses this statement to make the moral claims that Jane 1) is xenophobic and 2) supports the suffering of vulnerable populations at the border, which informs the fact that 3) she thinks human rights violations are morally permissible.

How did Alice come to draw these conclusions?

Simply by informing the qualities of the political actor, in this case Trump, onto Jane, the person making the claim. In the past, it is true that President Trump has been xenophobic and caused suffering at the border, but Alice has now transferred those moral priorities onto Jane. In her act of voting for Trump, Jane, in the mind of Alice, has become a xenophobic, migrant-hating, anti-human rights citizen.

And in the mind of a philosopher, Jane has successfully, and so perfectly committed a heinous crime, one that we commit all too frequently in politics – the fallacy of division.

The fallacy of division occurs when “the conclusion of an argument depends on the erroneous transference of an attribute from a whole onto its parts” (Hurley and Watson, A Concise Introduction to Logic13th Edition), or in this case, from a politician to its voters. Alice has transferred the moral beliefs of Trump onto the moral beliefs of all Trump voters, subsequently concluding that Jane holds those beliefs as well.

It’s true that the transference can be correct in certain cases. Given the statement “Trump voters are xenophobic”, I’m sure that there are some people out there that fit that bill. But the fallacy is committed in claiming that all Trump voters fit that bill, which subsequently claims that Jane fits that bill as well. In generalizing all voters into one group. In transferring all of these qualities to millions of people to which we know nothing about besides their political affiliation.

However, the thing that’s most troubling about committing this fallacy and generalizing these claims is the fact that we know they’re false. We know that not all of our political opponents are bad people. We don’t think that they’re evil.

A political statement is not necessarily a moral statement – but we really want it to be. We trick ourselves into thinking it's one. We convince ourselves that if someone is making such an egregious political claim, they must be an egregious person as a result.

When we reduce the content of political statements to moral statements, we oversimplify the nuances and characteristics behind people’s beliefs (another fallacy). We ignore the personal, cultural, and socioeconomic experiences that have pushed them to take that perspective in the first place. We adopt a sort of moral absolutism that only applies to those of a certain political belief, a certain time period, and a certain demographic.

And it’s the reason why we’ve become so harsh, so narrow in the way we view the world. It’s why our willingness to change, to even participate in politics has diminished so significantly. It’s permeated everything from the workplace to social media to relationships, and yet we still can’t see the alienating effect it has – why?

When I started writing this piece, I texted my mom the title to see how she would answer the question. Her response (sorry mom) says it all:

“Sometimes ...depends...today? Often I’d say.”

We think that it’s just a sign of the times. That the state of the world has pushed us to be this way. That there’s no way around these “irreconcilable” differences.

But it’s not. It’s inconsistent to think that a political statement today makes more of a moral claim than one made during the Vietnam or Korean wars, or any period of history for that matter.

Our moral absolutism, divided by party lines, is a self-inflicted wound. We’ve blurred the lines between the political and moral ourselves. We know that we’re not just partisans, but we can’t help ignoring these intricacies for the sake of our absolutism, for the sake of affirming our own biases and opinions.

The wound grows deeper with every interaction, every social media comment, every dinner table conversation because we want it to. There’s no world in which we can imagine our political opponents having justifiable reasons for their actions. There’s no world in which we can separate politics from morality, the organization from the individual, the whole from its parts.

And as a result, the dinner table we all sit at grows unusually quiet. Smiles and welcoming faces are replaced with clenched jaws and wavering eyes. The question hangs in the air, waiting for someone to ignite the storm.

​​Is this really the legacy we want to leave behind? Do we really want to live in a society perpetually on the brink of eruption? Have we become so consumed by our own righteousness that we've forgotten the very essence of human connection?

We rest on the precipice for now, but one can only wonder if there’s any coming back from the abyss we’ve dug ourselves into.

This has been a topic that I’ve thought about for years, yet have only recently begun to put together my thoughts on. If you have any thoughts, comments, or objections to this piece, feel free to respond to this email or reach out at andrew@andrewfleig.net – I look forward to hearing from you!