Know Your Enemy
23rd March 2023
ZMan jerks back the curtain.
The German philosopher Carl Schmitt observed that politics is about the friend – enemy distinction, played out in public. Everyone has people they call friends and people they think of as adversaries or enemies. This only becomes political when others outside these relations are called upon to pick sides. Politics is about groups of people opposing one another in public and forcing others to pick sides. The winner is the one whose group dominates the others.
The thing is, it is never easy to know your friends in politics, but the only way to survive is to know your enemies. Those would be the groups whose very existence depends upon your demise. Friendships are transactional as they are situational. When your interests align with those of another faction, you are friends while you have some common interest. When conditions change, the friendship ends. Enemies are always enemies because who they are the negation of you.
This is why conservatism has never amounted to much in America. They insist that politics do not exist and instead public policy is decided by factual accuracy and the best ideas to solve problems. While the people we insist on calling the Left run around playing politics, the conservatives spend their days making impressive charts and graphs explaining why they are right. Occasionally they win an election, only to be outclassed by their opponents once in office.