View this post on the web at [link removed]

In 1970, second-wave feminist Carol Hanisch published an essay titled, “The Personal Is Political [ [link removed] ].” A member of New York Radical Women and the women's liberation movement, she mocked the idea that topics such as sex, childcare or household labor were merely personal. Instead, each was inherently political and should motivate women to organize collective action against the patriarchy.
Around the same time, the essay’s title was adopted as a slogan by all sorts of leftist activists, each classifying various private issues as oppressive structural norms. They claimed that even the most personal circumstances and relationships required political solutions. Over the years, this “personal is political” mantra has subsumed virtually all parts of society, including education, business, religion and entertainment.
Indeed, more than a half-century later, Hanisch’s essay has succeeded far beyond what its little-known author could have imagined. The fact that it tore apart America’s social fabric was just a side benefit. Look around to see the results. A job recruiter fired for sharing a political meme [ [link removed] ]. A coffee shop being “review bombed” for issuing a pro-Hamas statement [ [link removed] ] or boycotted for having stores in Israel [ [link removed] ]. An actor losing work for requesting an exemption [ [link removed] ] from a vaccine mandate.
In declaring the private as political, the former boundary between the two was eroded, turning co-workers, teammates and longtime friends into intractable enemies. On an individual level, people now waste hours contemplating the ethical repercussions of wearing nail polish, what type of vehicle they buy or what hiking attire they wear. Every mundane thing is potentially a political act, and it’s enough to drive a sane society mad.
Not surprisingly, Americans now overwhelmingly want a break from politics. A 2023 Pew Research Center study [ [link removed] ] showed that about two-thirds of adults say they always or often feel exhausted when they think about politics, with only 9% saying they rarely or never feel this way. A slightly smaller majority say politics always or often makes them angry. And when asked to come up with a word or phrase to describe U.S. politics, about 8 in 10 Americans responded with a negative term, such as “divisive,” “corrupt” or “messy.”
Among Americans who say they are the most politically engaged, Pew found even more distaste for politics. Of this group, 72% reported feeling exhausted by politics always or often. All the numbers above cross every demographic and partisan boundary.
Even medical research corroborates these findings. In a study published by the American Psychological Association, participants were asked [ [link removed] ] to keep a diary as they experienced daily political events. These events consistently evoked negative emotions, which corresponded with worse mental and physical well-being. This motivated some to take political action, which made matters even worse. However, those who simply regulated those emotions without getting politically involved reported higher levels of well-being.
The researchers explained their findings. “To effectively harness people’s negative emotions, [political] activists need people to not reduce those emotions and may even want to increase these emotions. Yet, this may come at the expense of people’s well-being, suggesting a complicated ethical trade-off between mobilizing people for a cause and impairing the well-being of those taking action.”
Good luck achieving your political aims if you spend your life angry, exhausted and unhealthy. Not only will that ruin your own life, friends and neighbors will avoid you. I can’t count all the people who have told me they’re stepping away from politics, even the news in general, because it made them so miserable. I also can’t count those who’ve let themselves be consumed by it.
Some of the over-politicized are idealists captured by a charismatic leader. John F. Kennedy made Democrats swoon, as did Barack Obama 50 years later. Others devote themselves to a programmatic ideology. I once met a libertarian who got angry every time he rolled out his trash bin because he felt that the city shouldn’t collect garbage.
Meanwhile, many people have allowed their political views to form ever-narrowing identities. Take a man who started as a Republican, but then decided he’s not one of those RINO establishment types. So now he’s MAGA, but not one of those God-bothering types. He is America First, but not one of those extreme isolationists. (I mean, we gotta help Israel, right?) You get the idea.
Once these people have distilled their identity into a 150-proof single-malt, they jump online to find their tribe. They spend their free time in this echo chamber, listening only to podcasters, YouTubers and X accounts that reinforce their viewpoint. Until one of them varies an angstrom from the orthodoxy and is cast into the wilderness.
Despite their devotion to the cause, no politician, economic theory or policy platform will ever create happiness. Political burnout is the result, replacing over-politization with abject cynicism. The fact that even self-professed conservatives made the personal political shows how completely this leftist slogan has captured our culture.
This toxic notion also created the polarization of America at large. When politics is your identity, it’s hard to distinguish a policy disagreement from a personal attack. Reasoned debate is replaced with emotion, the most common being rage. A mother will disown a daughter for voting for a different candidate. A dear friend will block his former best man for believing COVID-19 came from a lab leak. A small business’s employees will quit their jobs [ [link removed] ] en masse because the owner supports Israel.
This is madness, something all Americans would have recognized 20 years ago. Our long experiment with “the personal is political” has borne poisoned fruit. Civic health requires we abandon it completely.
A healthier outlook requires a strict separation of self and state. Government doesn’t exist to give your life meaning, create a sense of self-worth, or grant you a prepackaged identity. It is there to perform mundane tasks, only a few of which are essential to your day-to-day life.
The government negotiates treaties. It defends our shores. It enforces laws. It prints money (does it ever). And whatever the government does, it’s guaranteed to be slow, inefficient and tick off at least half the population. In other words, it is not something that should infect every cell of society. At best, the government can provide a background order that allows citizens to flourish in their private lives, leaving them so fulfilled that they only think about politics a week out from Election Day.
The most beneficial attitude toward politics is a passionate devotion to keeping it out of our lives. At least nine-tenths of our day should be focused on family, friends, faith, work, hobbies and everything else that brings joy and beauty into our lives.
The good news is that the public already knows this, even if they don’t practice it. A different Pew study [ [link removed] ] posed an open-ended question to more than 18,000 adults across 17 advanced economies: “What makes life meaningful?” The top five answers were family, career, material well-being, friends and health. Politics didn’t appear.
Shortly after Election Day, we enter the holiday season. You will have had your say in the political process and celebrated or grieved the outcome. Then it’s time to set it aside. You’ll be happier, healthier and a far better companion at the Thanksgiving table. And all of this will leave you better equipped to encourage political change before the next election.
Paradoxically, the best method to achieve your preferred political outcomes is not to be political all or most of the time.

Unsubscribe [link removed]?