I write a lot in this blog about political issues, and I try to keep individual personalities out of politics as much as possible. If politics is about any specific thing, it’s about collective struggles over things like ownership and control of resources, rights, representation, et al. If you want something even more vague and unhelpful, I could stick with Aristotle and say it’s about the “affairs of the city.”
My point is that it’s not about individual personalities.
But that’s easier said than done. When I’m thinking about what to write in this blog, individual personalities frequently come to mind. In fact, I’ve devoted an entire category to an American political movement organized around an individual personality. Yes, that one.
And so, it turns out I find myself writing about specific people. When is it best to write about specific people? Here are my thoughts.
Good Reasons to Write About Political Figures
1. They have interesting or compelling ideas.
Lots of time I write about someone because they have something interesting to say that no one else is saying. Or because they’re saying it a way that’s far more visible than anyone else. Maybe it’s something that just got traction in the press, or maybe it’s something that hasn’t gotten traction but should.
In a post on voting, I cited and discussed a Noam Chomsky argument in favor of voting for Democrats when you live in a swing state. I argued against the Chomsky view, but I cited and discussed it because it’s a compelling argument from someone who often has compelling things to say.
I wrote a somewhat biographical post on W. E. B. Du Bois, and I’ve discussed the ideas of people like Kat Blaque, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Asad Haider, and Andrew Yang. Du Bois is a major figure in American civil rights and American socialism, so discussing him is a no-brainer. Blaque, Coates, Haider, and Yang have each made unique contributions to the discussion of major issues of political philosophy in an American context.
Of course, it’s important not to equate discussion to endorsement or veneration. The people I list above get some things right and some things wrong. If you’re keeping score, I’d say that Blaque, Du Bois, and Haider are often on the side of the angels, Coates often isn’t, and Yang rarely is.
The point is that when you limit discussion to people who are correct, you won’t have many people to write about. It’s pretty fucking hard to get things right, and it requires a lot of work.
2. They’re powerful.
Here’s something the presidency of Donald Trump shares with the entrepreneurial career of Howard Schultz: very few compelling ideas sprang forth from them.
So why would you want to write about either of these people?
They’re powerful. And the reason you may want to write about powerful people is that they impact the world. Usually in negative ways, to reference again the presidency of Donald Trump and the entrepreneurial career of Howard Schultz. Trump is something of the Prince of Racism, as Schultz is the Prince of Low Wage Work.
It’s important to understand how power impacts the world, particularly if we’re talking politics. You know…collective struggles over things like ownership and control of resources, rights, representation, et al. That stuff.
Bad Reasons to Write About a Political Figure
1. They’re famous.
When I was in college, a wealthy young woman named Paris Hilton starred in a TV show called The Simple Life. I think the show probably had some kind of plot. Whatever. The whole point of the show is that someone was famous for being famous, and so she got a TV show so that she could be more famous while she was famous for being famous.
There’s little reason to write about someone like Paris Hilton. At least not as a political personality. If you find out she owns a sweatshop somewhere, then, sure, write about that. But never give anyone attention qua famous person, or they might end up doing something really bad. Like, say, becoming the 45th president of the United States.
Trump aside, most people who are famous for being famous will never have anything interesting or important to say. This goes even more so for people who are “famous” social media stars. Writing about them only contributes to their fame.
2. They have terrible ideas.
I mean, whatever. I guess it’s cathartic to some people to bash those with over-the-top awful ideas, such as neo-Nazis. And if you want that kind of catharsis, it’s easier to find it in the age of the Internet than at probably any time in human history.
But I try to avoid that. When I’m on my best behavior, I write about that stuff only when I think there’s a chance it’s going to make a major impact in the world. Otherwise one runs the risk of elevating those ideas to a much larger audience than they’d otherwise have.
This is something the American left needs to spend more time thinking about. When should we condemn the far right in publicly visible ways, and when should we just ignore the trolls? Are we advancing good causes, or are we just playing defense all the time? I don’t necessarily have the answers to those questions, but I do think they’re questions we should be asking more often.
Applications
“This is all very nice and programmatic, Matt, but how do you apply it to all these real world cases!!??”
I’m going to set that aside for now. Maybe I’ll have something to say later about a wider range of real world cases.
How about you, though? How would you apply it?
