The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt — Read

“Politics ain’t beanbag,” said a Chicago humorist in 1895;1 it’s not a game for children. Ever since then the saying has been used to justify the rough-and-tumble nastiness of American politics. Rationalists might dream of a utopian state where policy is made by panels of unbiased experts, but in the real world there seems to be no alternative to a political process in which parties compete to win votes and money. That competition always involves trickery and demagoguery, as politicians play fast and loose with the truth, using their inner press secretaries to portray themselves in the best possible light and their opponents as fools who would lead the country to ruin.

1 Finley Peter Dunne; first printed in the Chicago Evening Post in 1895. The full quote, in an 1898 version in Irish brogue, is: “Politics ain’t beanbag. ’Tis a man’s game; an’ women, childher, an’ pro-hybitionists ’d do well to keep out iv it.”