--- philosophy ---
2025.09.12

We don’t often say it out loud (perhaps because we fear the futility of it), but governing a big, messy country is an exercise in trying to keep millions of people from metaphorically & literally throttling each other while moving in (roughly) the same direction. You can call it control, you can call it coordination, you can call it *herding…*whatever, it amounts to the same thing.

The “job” of the government, of the political system as a whole, is extremely hard, and it only gets harder relative to the size of the population and diversity of interests.

For the purposes of this discussion let’s gently set aside our foreign policy for the last 60 years (which is its own horror anthology). I want to talk about the policy toward us, the people living in America. What’s the real playbook? How does the government go about accomplishing the monumental task of GOVERNING?

From what I can see, the strategy can be summarized as divide & conquer. Not in some mustache-twirling villain way, but because the system’s incentives quietly nudge everyone…from politicians to the media to donors to voters…toward conflict over cooperation.

The biggest casualty here is sincere political discourse. I think it was once a genuine cornerstone of American life…or at least it appears that way through the lens of history. Either way, I think we can all see that it’s basically dead. And I would argue that the system slowly killed it on purpose, because honest conversation is now dangerous to the architecture of modern politics. And it’s been replaced with an obsession with being RIGHT above all else.

The Job of Government

A government needs the population to share enough common ground (rules, norms, goals, beliefs), that day-to-day life functions without constant civil breakage. Doesn’t need to be all roses & kumbaya. But it does need to be compatible enough that people don’t tear each other apart every chance they get.

Small, culturally cohesive places tend to do this more smoothly. Consider city-states like Singapore, small Nordic municipalities, even some well-run U.S. towns where everyone still participates in society. But as we’ve scaled up to 330 million people across wildly different geographies, economies, and identities, coordination has been replaced with “rightness”.

With that in mind, what’s the easiest (perhaps only) path for a national political machine? It needs to keep factions mobilized, outraged, and donating. It must reward in-group loyalty. It must punish cross-tribe compromise. It must build feedback loops that prefer heat over light, noisy disagreement over quiet compromise, hubris over humility.

I am here to argue that the American political system has accomplished exactly that while pushing the facade of “democracy at work.”

Smothering Real Conversation

If you look around you, you will probably notice lots of dog whistles, gaslighting, performative outrage, normalized extremism, and metric-dodging instead of “Okay, here’s an obvious problem, here’s the information we have, let’s figure out how to solve it together”.

I would fully concede that the internet has accelerated this SEPARATION and has widened the gulf between people. But I would also argue that the government system (and thus the people in it) are heavily disincentivized from finding common ground. In fact they are politically punished for it.

There’s some evidence for this if you consider the incentives:

• Primaries reward purity tests. If you try to cross the aisle, you will quickly run upon a well-funded primary challenger. (See: former Sen. Bob Bennett in 2010; Rep. Liz Cheney in 2022; various members censured by their own state parties after bipartisan votes.)
• Gerrymandering shrinks the middle. “Safe” districts shift the real contest to the primary, where the loudest base dominates.
• Cable and social media monetize conflict. A spicy 20-second clip beats a boring 20-page policy paper every time. Who has the attention to read 20 pages nowadays? Better to just take the soundbite and go scream about it with your family at the dinner table.
• Donor ecosystems seek clarity. “Us vs. them” is a better fundraising email than “this is complicated.”

As a result, compromise is a liabilityin our system. If you’ve ever seen a genuinely unhealthy marriage, you know this vibe. Every attempt at middle ground gets interpreted as betrayal by both sides.

The Nasty Marriage

Think of the healthiest marriage you know. The moderate stance isn’t pathetic; it’s the balancing act that keeps the thing growing. You give, I give, we adjust, we try again. You don’t get everything you want, and neither do I, and that’s fine because the relationship matters more than the win.

Now think of the worst marriage you’ve seen. The couple resents each other. Every conversation is a move in a ridiculous real-life courtroom drama. Any compromise is weaponized. They’re staying together for the mortgage or the optics or the kids or the money or whatever, but the toxicity always floats right beneath the surface. An illustration of the American political system right now.

The problem with poisonous relationships is that even sincere compromise can backfire. We’ve stacked contradictory rules, layered executive orders over legislative stalemates, and built two parties that survive only by rejecting the other’s legitimacy.

In this environment, a “centrist” take is simply taken as a personal insult to both sides. The bridge is on fire, there is no safe pathway to moderation, the smallest step towards the other side leads to severe third-degree burns, and all of this leaves very little room for love.

Vibes & Villains

You might have noticed that politicians increasingly appeal to emotion over logic. I don’t think this is because they’re uniquely evil, it just works better and faster. Fear and belonging are primal. If I can keep you scared of them, I don’t have to explain how the numbers pencil out. If I can keep you loyal to us, I don’t have to show measurable results. I can survive (politically) on vibes and villains.

And God forbid you wander off to talk with the other side! Expect to be labeled. Expect to be shunned. The incentives punish empathy, even though empathy is how actual problem-solving happens. We used to know that, I think.

A Health(ier) Marriage

We’ve probably come too far for a quick fix with some makeup sex, but here’s a few things that might help:

• Re-incentivize the middle. Nonpartisan redistricting. Open primaries. Ranked-choice voting. It slowly becomes safe to say, “The other side made a good point.”
• Hold the goalposts steady. Both parties publish clear, consistent metrics & live or die by the numbers. If the goal is, for example, reducing overdose deaths, we don’t change the metric mid-stream because the outcome looks bad. We accept the failed attempt and pivot. (This, of course, requires us to be able to agree on a stated goal ahead of time).
• Reward bridge-builders. Committee power, donor attention, airtime are given to the folks who architect a boring, pragmatic bill that actually works.
• Localize more. Push decisions downward where there’s still social fabric. Healthy marriages don’t run every fight through some higher authority.

None of this will happen overnight. The real question is — do enough people actually want it? I’m not sure. It really comes down to how many people are too deeply entrenched in the existing system. But if we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re headed for a bitter divorce. Parallel realities sharing one house render that house one of cards.

Final Musings

I don’t think most Americans want to hate each other. I think the machine makes money and wins elections by telling us we have to. The marriage metaphor isn’t mean to be cute, I’d consider it a warning label. If we keep rewarding maximalist language and punishing empathy, the center doesn’t hold. Not because centrism is weak, but because we built a system where compromise is framed as betrayal.

I don’t have a cure, nobody does, and part of the problem is that we keep listening to people who claim to have one. But I do think the path back starts with small, boring acts of respect and measurement. We need a healthy dose of “Okay, what problem are we trying to solve, and how will we know if it’s working?”.

We need empathy. We need some compromise. We need level-headedness. The harest part, I think, is that we need to re-learn how to love each other. Even if we are political opponents. Maybe I’m naive, but what’s the alternative?