One hears occasionally that the road to politics is a dead end. But a street implies two ends, not one. So from which end do we commence and from which end do we terminate? Let us call one end, for lack of a better term, Libertarian, an intuitive distrust of controlling authorities simultaneously perceived as both diffuse and pervasive, the hidden shackles lurking around slowly turning corners, the visible and invisible menace of our political Leviathan. At the same time, there exists a counter-current flowing from a second point rooted in the notion of civil society as the highest end of homo politicus. Let us call this other end, Republican in the Aristotelean sense, not the ideological sense.

The conflict between these two pillars of thought – Libertarian and Republican – is more protean, dynamic, and intractable than can be gleaned by the analogy of a simple street sign. The real danger lies not at both ends but crossing between, not a collapse into, but a compromise into authoritarianism. This ever present danger of a creeping authoritarianism is due to the fact that no modern political system is allowed to fail. Failure is not an option. The stakes are far too great. Yet, equally, no political system succeeds. Success, already limited by exigencies is rendered a blunt edge by the necessity of compromise, manifesting as the collective performance of political theatre in all its multiple variations and permutations, most notably seen in the constant drum beat, the ritual accusing/shunning/cleansing of the symbolic evil of partisanship.

Politics cannot save us from a descent into authoritarianism because politics creates the fruitful grounds in which war is waged. Given the intractable nature of the war, this desire to end politics once and for all is unsurprising. Less abstract, the allure of a strong arm always holds the promise of a swift and decisive victory by one side over the other. It is also why ideology is beside the point. Like the siren’s call, a new faith emerges, the transcendence of all political systems, the dream of utopia, but in reality, a proto-fascism.