I think the best analogy for modern-day politics is sports teams. I root for the Red Sox, because they’re my local team. Yankees suck! This is foolish, of course. The Yankees are a great team. They’re not an enemy, but friendly competition.

Politics today are the same way. Democrats hate Republicans, and Republicans think Democrats are destroying America. And we are the fans, cheering for our side and booing the other.

But the problem is that the teams don’t matter, and a drama-filled game isn’t good in politics. We sit back and watch heated political debates, and start cheering for our side and vehemently opposing the other. But at the end of the day, politics isn’t a game we play for fun. It’s the operation of our country, and it impacts each of us every day.

It’s not just that we root for our teams that’s the problem, it’s that we do so without caring about the game. It would be like if I cheered fanatically for the Red Sox and talked the next day about how bad the Yankees were, yet I never bothered to watch a moment of the game. In politics, the teams don’t matter, and yet the “game” we all ignore is profoundly important.

This is interesting, because it doesn’t talk about political parties. I evaluated a whole bunch of proposals to fix problems, and did so without having much of an indication if I was backing a Republican idea or a Democratic idea. Doing so forced me to think about the pros and cons of individual bills, without hearing any twisted rhetoric from either side. This is what politics should be.

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