Gracious Concessions

Why the personal should not be political

Old Parliament House, Canberra. Photo by Sam Ilić.

An old friend recently shocked me by sending me a message in which he expressed scorn, disdain and anger at my political writing and editing. Twelve hours later, he thought better of his outburst and apologised. I’ve been a hothead at times myself, so I’m willing to let it go. But his apology has me musing: to paraphrase, he says that, given how deeply politics has permeated every aspect of American life, it’s almost impossible to even talk about personal matters without political resentments and fears colouring everything. I sympathise somewhat. These are turbulent and chaotic times and Trump’s slash-and-burn policies are clearly being most intensely felt in the US itself, a country I last visited during the Obama administration.

I rarely talk about my own politics in this blog, but I can’t avoid doing so a bit now. My day job involves working for a magazine that devotes at least half of its space to long-form commentary on and analysis of international politics and naturally US politics looms large in that coverage. We have a lot of American writers and readers and, even if we didn’t, what happens in America tends to slosh over into the rest of world. We’ve published a lot on Trump lately and it’s almost all been extremely critical. I myself have been opposed to Trump since he first ran as a candidate in the primaries and, together with a bunch of more eminent writers, contributed to an op-ed urging centrists not to vote for him in 2016. I live in Australia. I’m not American. I don’t have a vote in the US presidential elections. And if I had been able to vote, I wouldn’t have voted for Trump. I provide this background to make it clear that my friend’s anger at me wasn’t straightforward. He wasn’t accusing me of being a Trump supporter. Instead, his view was that, by criticising the faults of the left, as I see them,* I had helped enable Trump’s election.

I think there are several problems with this view and none of them are specific to any particular political affiliation. Trump is like a giant black hole in contemporary political discourse. We need to get away from that event horizon to prevent distorting some of the wider issues here. First of all, there is the idea that you should be cautious of criticising your own side, lest you give to succour to the enemy. I’m sceptical of this. It is true that words often have unintended consequences and may influence other people into actions the writer would not have wanted them to have taken. But it’s always difficult to prove. It might equally be the case that trying to conceal, gloss over or sanitise the faults of your own side may fool no one and might just make people distrust you more. There’s something to be said for cleaning up your own act. It makes you seem like you’re serious about doing the best you can, rather than just trying to win a competition.

I also think it’s often a fool’s game to try to predict how your words will be interpreted, especially within the constantly shifting landscape of partisan politics, in which everything from individual issues to entire movements can go from being left-wing to right-wing or vice versa. Immigration restrictionism used to be a left-wing policy, justified by the need to protect native-born workers from competition with newcomers; now immigration is a largely right-wing concern. Feminism used to be strongly associated with the left; now, given conflicts between the rights of natal and the rights of trans women, many traditional feminist views are seen as right-wing—or even far-right. (You might disagree on these specific examples. They’re just the first ones that sprang to my mind. Choose your own if these don’t seem right to you—let’s not get too caught up in specifics.)

This principle feels better to me, more Stoic: don’t spend too much time second-guessing how other people might interpret your words or how they might twist them or weaponise them in service to a cause you don’t agree with. Just speak the truth as you see it, to the best of your knowledge. Don’t worry about whether it is “left-coded” or “right-coded” or anything coded. Or a “dogwhistle” or a “talking point” or a “failure to read the room.” Some people will always misinterpret you, or will try to hijack your words for their own purposes. Just try to look at each issue on its own merits and ask yourself: what’s true? what’s practical? what’s important? And be humble enough to realise that other people might come to different conclusions on all those things.

Democratic politics is inherently adversarial. This is good: I wouldn’t want to live in a one-party state. Ideally, the two (or more) political parties help to keep each other reasonably honest. You need political opponents because they have a vested interest in pointing out your errors, which can help you course-correct. It’s natural for people to disagree. And it’s natural for people to be wrong. It’s an odd quirk of human nature that most of us change our minds on political issues over the course of our lives—and, yet, as soon as we’ve changed our minds, we forget we ever believed differently. We behave as if, when you go to the polling booth, the options are The Good and The Evil. That is very rarely the case.

American political movements have always been prone to messianic fervour from the earliest days of the republic to the War on Terror and the Black Lives Matter marches. It’s probably no coincidence that the US is also the most religiously observant country in the developed world—a huge outlier in that regard. American politics has a tendency to lend itself to evangelicalism. This is both historical and it’s structural: Americans cannot help but be keenly aware that they live in the most important country on Earth; that where they lead, the world is likely to follow. This raises the stakes.

I live in a calmer country. We have just been through an election. I polled my friends and acquaintances on their voting preferences: they were almost completely evenly split between Labor and Liberal (confusingly, Liberals are the right-wing party here), with a few favouring the Libertarians and even Greens (my personal last choice) and One Nation (an anti-immigration party to the right of the main contenders). I am unsurprised by this: the differences between the parties are small.

A guy recently told me that he went to school with the newly re-elected prime minister, Anthony Albanese. “I didn’t vote for him,” he said. “I don’t agree with his politics. But I can tell you that he’s a great bloke.”

I’m a huge fan of gracious concession speeches: it’s such a noble tradition. At a moment of huge personal disappointment, you have to stand up and tell the world that you are grateful for having had the chance to serve the public and to participate in a peaceful contest for power. I invite you to listen to Peter Dutton’s speech after he led his party to a devastatingly poor performance at the polls here and he himself lost the seat he’s held for nearly a quarter of a century. Some commentators have called Dutton “the Australian Trump.” But it’s impossible to imagine Trump having the humility to make a speech like this.

Similarly, in his victory speech, Anthony Albanese declared, “Inevitably, the [election] campaign and the coverage is about our differences and our disagreements. That is the nature of our democracy and it is role of the media who serve it. But now that the Australian people have made their clear choice, let us all reflect on what we have in common.” There is no Australian Trump. If there were, he would not flourish. The climate here is not conducive to it—I hope it always remains that way. “In Australia, we respect people,” Albo said, shutting down a heckler who started booing at the mention of the opposition party.

The gracious concession speech is an extremely important tradition. It’s one of those customs that force us to go against our initial emotional impulses, thereby preserving social relationships. No matter how pointed the gibes and how colourful the language exchanged in the heat of parliamentary debate, none of that antagonism is allowed to spill over into the concession speech (or indeed, the victory speech). It’s the opposite of a drive-by Twitter spat. Online, the speed at which we can communicate means that we don’t have to pause and make conscious decisions about how we are going to respond to people. This is probably part of what has led to a general erosion of social institutions and norms. For once, we should view our political representatives as role models. Once the battle is over and the votes have been called, you shift your focus from the specific competition that you were just fighting and take a moment to reflect on the larger, broader, more important values—even if it’s only for the time it takes to make a single speech. You accept with humility and you retreat with dignity. That means a lot.

Some of the Americans who oppose Trump might argue that they are faced with an ideology that is uniquely harmful and evil—how can they be friends with people who endorse it? I would urge them to consider that it can be possible to detest a belief system, secular or faith-based, to condemn it in the strongest terms and even to campaign against it, without ostracising personal friends and family who subscribe to it. I don’t have first-hand experience of this, but I do have a lot of second-hand experience. I’ve encountered ex-Muslims who have been subjected to female genital mutilation, forced marriage, gay conversion therapy, beatings and death threats, all justified by Islamic theology. Yet while many ex-Muslims I know have dedicated their lives to pointing out the dangers of Islamic extremism, I don’t know any ex-Muslim who has dehumanised everyone who follows the religion whose tenets have caused them so much suffering. Most ex-Muslims I know still love family members who believe that they are going to hell for their apostasy. We can separate human beings from their belief systems, we can distinguish people from party. And I believe we should.

For most ordinary people, who are neither pundits nor politicians, politics is a matter of assertions: telling others I think this, reassuring them that we are part of their tribe, that we oppose and support the same things as they do. This is inevitable. But I think it’s possible to look beyond that, to refuse to judge people by their political affiliations, to see them as individuals. Politics matters. I have strong political beliefs myself and I understand why people think it is important. Vote, campaign, write, publish, argue your case, sure.

But what matters more is not what people say but what they do: how they behave towards people close to them; how generous they are; how kind; how loyal; how honest. Donald Trump has inflamed people’s passions on both right and left and led too many to lose sight of what is most important about their fellow human beings.

I’m glad my friend apologised. It neutralised my anger. But unfortunately, the initial interaction probably damaged our friendship permanently: I can’t help that. It was a breach of trust. Don’t get me wrong: I think that trust could be restored in person relatively easily, for the same reasons that few of us are as rude, as aggressive, as combative towards others in person as we can be on social media, or in a message or email. In person, you are forced to deal with the entire human being, while online, you are responding only to their disembodied opinions. Our own friendship grew and flourished because we were able to meet and hug and drink mimosas and dance. But he and I live continents apart now. I have no plans to return to the US in the foreseeable future and he will probably never come to Australia. I think the bond may be broken and I’m still too bruised from the interaction to even feel sad about that right now. But I suspect that, in time, I will.

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• (If you’re curious as to the kinds of criticisms of the left I’ve aired, you can find a few here, here and here—I am a milquetoast centrist.)