A New Kind of Politics

On the morning after the recent U.S. election, my mother called me. She was upset, and not just because of what had happened the night before. My sister, she told me, had phoned earlier, fuming at the fact that we were all looking down the barrel of another Trump presidency. My mother responded with sympathy and her own, more mitigated reaction; while she herself embodies the antithesis of Trump — a compassionate, loving, and resolute woman with a zest for life and deep admiration for everyone around her — she doesn’t engage as much with the world outside her own immediate circles. Her knowledge of politics and current events only goes so far as what she hears from the clients at her hair salon, her infinite number of friends and family WhatsApp groups, and what she might encounter on her overpopulated Facebook feed. My mother knew who Trump was, opposed what he stood for, and voted for Vice President Harris, albeit after confirming with her kids that voting Democrat was the right thing to do. 

Imagine my mother’s surprise when my sister turned her frustration about the election toward her instead. Why wasn’t she angrier? Why wasn’t she more concerned about the future of the country, or what this meant for women’s rights? 

My mother was angry. She was worried. Growing up in a culture propagated by the subjugation of wives and daughters, she knew exactly the trajectory the country could go down. But to her, politics was palace intrigue. What took place in the dun-colored halls of power was always seven degrees removed from the rest of the world: socially emancipated (and often white) octogenarians stamping over inconsequential papers; political muckraking in closed-door, cigar-filled rooms; backyard deals that further entrenched a long-held perception that corruption was the modus operandi. My mother knew her world would keep spinning, her family safe and relatively happy. That was enough.

But to my sister, and a great many youth of our passionate, fed-up generation who perceive the Trumps, Musks, and Adams of the world as harbingers of the end times, the final straws of a culmination of environmental neglect and racial intolerance, complacency was tantamount to heresy. My sister redirected this frustration at my mother, and in turn, my mother responded not with guilt, but with distress at being attacked, because even though she agreed on principle, her expression of faith to the cause wasn’t loud enough.

Partisanship is Not What it Used to Be

This tiff between my family is indicative of a larger paradigm shift within politics. No longer are we divided purely on party lines. Polarization has encompassed political identification, in which the degree to how much one engages with politics and associates that engagement with their core identity reveal more about who they vote for than personal values. The fact of the matter is that most people are more like my mother than my sister, or me (or likely anyone reading this article). They get their news on TikTok, reiterate takes from gossip, and go about their day more concerned about paying their mortgage on time or making sure their kids are safe. When some of them see a provocative meme of Donald Trump spouting nonsense, they might laugh and pass it on to their friends. Oftentimes, it may be the only time they see a politician in their purview. So when they go vote — yes, even politically disengaged citizens vote —  they tick the box of the one candidate, no matter how abhorrent at face value, that brought color to the grey political machinery always running in the background.

There are people who vote because they believe in Trump and his discriminatory agenda. And there are people who vote one way or the other based on their most suffocating challenges or the only piece of information they have about government. Social media and a tunnel-visioned traditional media landscape might have us believe the country is more of the former than the latter. I’d wager the opposite. Believing that most people are irreconcilable is easy. It allows us to be adversarial by default. It prevents us from being accountable, allowing us to blame an ignorant electorate. The slightest whiff of conservatism or restraint from advocacy is enough to rally us to arms. Our most egregious sin is our confusion: we have become mobilizers, not organizers; ideological purists, not integrous leaders; reactionaries, not revolutionaries. 

There is a popular take circulating that any sort of politics of persuasion is over. The politics of the 21st century demands confrontation, and any sort of reconciliation is a waste of time. But imagine if my sister had taken a breath and explained to my mother why Trump’s victory needed to elicit a stronger reaction within each of us. Imagine if she compared the plight of fundamental freedoms in Project 2025 with the platform of Narendra Modi, a troubling doctrine that my mother knew first hand the dangers of. Imagine if my mother, in response, realized that the political and personal are inseparable for the gay or trans communities, or, more resonant to her own experiences, for immigrants.

A Fragmented Theory of Change

The new framework of political identification is unknown to us, and therefore we lack shared purpose, vision, and language, fracturing our already fragile coalition of disenchanted moderates and shoot-for-the-moon radicals. Our media diets do nothing to disabuse us of this notion. They ask us not to betray our values, but to double down on them in order to divide us further. Our opponents, then, are not just the far right, the dangerous, and the despots; they are us. If the party isn’t acknowledging the atrocities in Gaza, it is the fault of the cohort withholding their votes for expecting more out of their representatives. If an insurgent candidate sacrifices progressive policy in order to provide more immediate relief for their constituents, they are dead to us.

The most detrimental consequence of this shift is an unhealthy suspicion that the people around us lack a crowd-sourced, market-tested moral hygiene. This ethical populism guarantees that we inhabit echo chambers, in which civility is context-driven instead of a universal given. 

There are tangible steps we can take to infuse this civility back into our political ethos, but it requires us to replace our deepest instincts of skepticism with curiosity: instead of asking your neighbors who they voted for, ask what they would change about their communities if they were in positions of power. Speaking from years of experience in grassroots organizing, I can tell you their answers will be modest, personal, and relatable.

Their interpretation of the best path to achieve those goals may be harder to swallow, but when trust is the foundation of any interaction, you’ll find persuasion to be a far easier task. There’s a reason that faith-based communities recruit and maintain members so effectively: when people approach political coalitions, the first question is often about adherence to specific perspectives on social issues; but when they approach a religious community, they’ll be asked about their families and how they live their lives.

A New Kind of Politics

My mother, in my humble opinion, is the world’s best person. My sister is loving, hilarious, and can get along with anyone. Both exemplify a better world simply by being irrepressibly themselves. They’ve done the hard work of social change by this fact alone, because they refuse to be defined by anyone else and flourish through their chosen paths.

Politics doesn’t have to be flagrant. It can be an embodiment of my mother and my sister. It can be about getting the right people in the right place so they can influence how society operates. Obscurity, complacency, fear — these are all personal barriers we can overcome ourselves.

We decide what a new kind of politics looks like, starting from the interactions we have every day.