“Once capitalism invades the whole of life, then struggle involves the whole of life.” Rick Roderick, The Emancipatory Challenge of Critical Theory (interview), 1987

“There’s too damn much politics in this country. It’s infecting everything.” Jay Nordlinger, Need to Know (podcast), episode 203, 2017

BATTLE is joined, and the last defenders of liberty and decency make their final stand against the aggressor. What liberty, you may ask? This decency, or that? And defended against whom? Well you might wonder. The liberty and decency in question are, respectively, the freedom peaceably to enjoy private pleasures and pastimes, and the standards of civility, honesty and kindness shared even amongst strangers in private life. The aggressor is politics, and those who seek with barbed spear to penetrate the private bubble, and drown in politics everything inside. Each of the two opposing armies is a coalition of left and right, populist and elite, conservative and feminist. In this struggle everyone is, by the weight of the aggressor’s ambition, conscripted for one side or the other. At stake is the right to live a life even partially sheltered from the ceaseless bitter intrigues of politics, and the possibility of keeping common decency and conviviality in our dealings with others based on an unconscious agreement to leave our politics, and all our stupid petty tribal rancour, out of it.

The battle goes against us. The dysfunctional news cycle – a true perpetual outrage machine comprising cable news, talk radio, social media and pop-up news websites – spins faster and faster, ceaselessly politicising everything. In Scotland, Twitter Bravehearts (“cybernats”) find fault and conspiracy everywhere, from the treason of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes to the orientation of Great Britain on the map used in the BBC weather forecast (yes, really). Inevitable demands for protests and boycotts follow. (The full list of companies patriotic Scots are instructed to boycott would fill a heavy book). My own poor girlfriend (Scots, but a pro-British Boudicca) succumbs to a complete transformation whenever she meets a fellow-exile in London, treading with utmost delicacy for fear of saying the wrong thing. In England, meanwhile, things have got so bad that a deadly fire in a neglected social housing block – modern-day London’s vertical slums – ignited debate not on the inadequacy of British building regulations or the parlous provision of social housing, but on the fairness of the unhinged and shameless accusation that the victims of the fire were “murdered by the state”. In Northern Ireland, coalition governments are paralysed over the naming of parks. And in America, no niche is safe from invasion by politics, however small: Halloween costumes, video games and comics are all now theatres of a raging culture war.

The right is as much to blame as the left. They have their own form of political correctness, with its own identity politics, echo chambers, sacred cows and parade of endlessly self-pitying victims[1]. They too engage in “virtue signalling” (conspicuously sharing an opinion fashionable amongst one’s peers), and are delighted to engage the far left on their own terms: that is to say, by politicising everything. The antics of the right’s culture warriors far exceeded mere resistance to the perceived politicisation by feminists of their pastimes – their movies, comic books, video games and the like – when they stopped merely defending and began pre-emptively attacking anything they suspected of having succumbed to feminist influence. The reaction to a remake of Ghostbusters starring an all-female cast by right-wing culture warriors – a display for which the label “hysterical” is woefully inadequate – is only the most notorious recent example, culminating, as it did, in the actress Leslie Jones being sent death threats and vicious racist imagery by internet trolls and the subsequent Twitter decapitation of the online right’s favourite shrieking diva, Milo Yiannopolous. The furious politicisation of mosque building by the far right in Europe and America is a lower-profile but perhaps more sinister trend. Here I remind anyone thinking me one sided that the litany of stupidities attributable to the far left in the cause of politicising everything is sufficiently well-covered by the press for my purposes, but, for the sake of balance, I invite you to slack your jaw watching the bizarre spectacle of a deranged young woman upbraiding a (probably also very left-wing) fellow student over his hair.

Of course, the truth that is so often missed is that the people who talk about politics reliably overstate the importance of the subject. Engaging with politics is like using a computer: unwise to do without, undoubtedly a marvel in its complexity and accomplishment, but very much the squeeze and not the juice. Computers are for business, entertainment and communication and, apart from a few technical professionals and amateur enthusiasts, few of us are interested in reading error messages or tinkering with the code. Those who comment sometimes forget that there are many things in life more important than politics; more beautiful, more worthy, more fulfilling and more beneficial to others. The purpose of politics is to provide these other things – justice, peace, liberty and the space for human creativity to flourish – and a political system is judged favourably in so far as it succeeds in doing so. The breakfast table is a happy place is spite of the newspaper resting on it, not because of it. Political enthusiasts are rare, and this is not exclusively a bad thing. The most active citizens reliably propagate the most poisonous and delusional beliefs, nearly always based on some insatiable identity grievance (the tea party, Brexit, Scottish independence and Trump movements leap to mind). And low voter turnout – furrowing brows in liberal circles across the land – can reveal satisfaction as much as despair, as was surely the case in Britain’s no-show elections of 2001 and 2005. Indeed, the most obvious explanation for the failure of radical plans for reorganising politics – radical feminism, radical socialism, radical democracy, radical populism – is that they demand more time and commitment to politics than anyone other than a fanatic can give: the real trouble with socialism, in other words, is that it “takes up too many evenings”[2]. The prats who tweet day and night about how offended they are by the latest sexist toothpaste ad/example of BBC left-wing bias (delete as appropriate) are just as blind to the public’s indifference as the pundits and political scientists.

The awful dream of re-ordering society on a hyper-political basis may be doomed, but their effort is already making life miserable for the rest of us. The liberty to wish a stranger good morning or to buy a cup of coffee without acrimony, tribal suspicion or the risk of stepping on a political landmine is one not be surrendered lightly. It matters if you are unable to walk around with your hair tied in matted knots without being accused of colonialism and oppression. So let there be some neutral spaces. Protect the sanctity of the pub, the playing fields and the home from the perpetual partisan whinging of the professionally affronted. These people are experts at finding malice where there is none, but sometimes – sometimes – a film is just a film.  Don’t let them ram their ill-informed, tribal, prejudicial politics where it does not belong.

[1] Respectively consider: (1) the Fox News-Drudge Report/Breitbart/World Net Daily-MAGA Twitter ecosystem; (2) the insistence that all differences in male and female behaviour are explained by biology; and (3) the “conservative” blogger Lauren Southern – in every aspect of her conduct the archetypal narcissistic, whiny and precious Millennial.

[2] Oscar Wilde.