There is a particular kind of panic unique to modern political culture.
Not disagreement; disagreement is normal. Necessary, even.
The panic arrives slightly later than that. At the precise moment somebody discovers a political opponent may also be recognisably human.
I was reading a column recently about a journalist spending time with Gerry Brownlee.
The piece itself was exhausting.
But buried under all the performance and signalling was a surprisingly simple story.
(Although I confess the columnist’s use of the phrase “Powers At Be” briefly caused me physical pain.)
A younger progressive writer got a call from an older conservative politician inviting a meeting and discovered him to be thoughtful, attentive, curious, emotionally present, and sincerely concerned about the health of democracy.
This appeared to come as a profound shock.
Not merely surprising.
Destabilising.
The truly fascinating part of the article was the need to reassure readers that no ideological contamination had occurred. (“I’m not cured.”)
We risk becoming irreversibly trapped in a strange performative hostility where sincerity itself feels politically dangerous.
Every acknowledgement of decency arrives buffered by disclaimers, and every moment of empathy requires qualification, as though recognising humanity in ideological opponents risks being mistaken for endorsement.
And perhaps this is why so much political identity now feels performative rather than civic.
Not entirely fake. But curated. Maintained.
Continuously pointed toward an imagined audience.
Not simply:
“What do I think?”
But:
“What will my people think of me for thinking it?”
This creates an unsustainable atmosphere where basic human recognition starts feeling socially dangerous.
A conservative politician listens carefully for several hours and suddenly the columnist writes as though she has accidentally wandered into an emotional affair.
Meanwhile the politician in question comes across throughout the piece as almost aggressively normal.
Polite. Institutional. Slightly gruff. Interested in democratic legitimacy. Concerned about civic disengagement.
In other words: exactly like somebody who has spent decades participating in the democratic life of the country might reasonably behave.
Brownlee did not turn out to be secretly radical. He simply appeared sincere.
It is that which now feels almost culturally disorienting.
We claim to value authenticity while simultaneously building social environments that punish unguarded sincerity almost immediately.
The hopeful truth that the columnist was painfully trying to avoid is, I suspect, that democracy survives less through agreement than through repeated encounters with the unbearable discovery that other people are, in fact, real.
Not symbols. Not avatars. Just people.
Complicated, contradictory, frequently wrong people.
But people nonetheless.
Anyway.
It’s “the powers that be”.