Hyperpolitical

Of all the alarming and saddening outcomes of the shooting on Sunday night in Las Vegas, the most deeply alarming and saddening of all has only begun to occur:  all things have become hyperpolitical.

We have been subjected to this development over the last year, where every event and comment is viewed only through the lens of what it does to advance one's political position.  Everything becomes measured by the advances that can be made for the cause, not responded to as the tragedy or evil act that it may have actually been.

We have now reached the point in our political debate that an executive of a major news network (CBS) can comment that she has no sympathy for the dead because they are not of her political affiliation and may voted against her candidate (she was also fired today) or someone posting on their feed they hope only one side dies (since taken down but, thanks to the Interweb, living on forever).  I will take these people at their word that they truly believe this and would somehow hope that their "opposition" dies.

Secretly, of course, both sides are holding their breath for more details.  They always do, now, hoping the perpetrator (or perpetrators) fit their stereotype of the opposition so they can count coup.  "Thank God"  they cry, "the shooter/bomber/driver/cheese slicer was a (fill in the blank with race and gender and personal creed).  This surely proves that the other side is (fill in the blank with the favorite word for evil) and we should (fill in the blank with the political or social agenda of choice)."  A sort of Mad Lib for politics.

We have (rapidly, apparently) reached the point where the opposition has become faceless and nameless, a series of ideas we need to punish and swat down rather than people (in some cases, theoretically fellow citizens) that share a country and a civilization us.  Everything - every nuance, every breath, every character - is now a weapon in an undeclared war.

This is hyper-politicization (not sure if it was a word, but it is one now), where everything becomes extremely political - in fact, nothing is not a political statement.  The failure to agree with certain things or be against certain things, the failure to virtue signal when appropriate, even the failure to say anything at all - all of these become small items stored away on somebody' score card, proof (or lack thereof) that one is is for The Cause or Against it.  Everything that occurs is only a step to make progress in one's own cause.

I sound bitter - and a little sad - because the historian in me can point to numerous times in history - The Roman Republic, The Crusader States, The Heian monarchy before the Gempei War, the Russian Monarchy, the Weimar Republic, the Republic of China - where hyper-politicization occurred.  It occurred right up to the moment that everything fell apart.  A third party - often from the inside - steps in by playing one side off against the other until at the end all power has come into his hands and the people, exhausted by the years of endless strife and sick to death of the political nature of everything, would happily take a dictatorship so long as it promised peace and food.

"The fruit of too much liberty is slavery" said Marcus Tullius Cicero, himself ultimately the victim of a hyperpolitical atmosphere.  It occurs to me that the tree boughs are full and almost breaking with the weight of the harvest.