Political "bipartisanship" is impossible.

I'm a little bit frustrated with people who think political "bipartisanship" is something we should strive for and that politics should be kept separate from other concerns. First, I don't think any such thing as neutrality exists, so I think aiming for it is futile; second, I think politics is what gives life meaning and purpose, rather than being a mere accessory to other concerns. And I don't mean politics in the narrow sense of electoral politics in the United States, but rather politics in the wider sense implied in the statement "Everything is politics." Politics then appears to mean a lot of different things, but I think its intention can be pared down to one simple phrase and that phrase is "getting what you want."

Now you're probably thinking I'm one of those horrible persons who profess a morality of ends rather than means. And, to be frank, that is what I'm saying, but let me add the caveat that no coherent political philosophy can function otherwise. Even "means"-philosophies are really about "ends"; means actually are ends and the very moment we started pretending there was a difference, politics became a game of smoke-and-mirrors. But I'm getting sidetracked.

Many people respond to the statement "Everything is politics and politics is about getting what you want" as if it's deeply cynical and probably extremely selfish, too. But I think our automatically negative reactions to phrases like the above is to no small part a conditioned response. We act as if people ever function differently, and we often forget the wide variety of things people can desire.

For example, I have a progressive vision for the future of this country. I want a diverse and responsible culture in which evolution occurs freely; a political environment in which ideas that foment the aforementioned flourish, while reactionary, conservative ideas die out; and a drastic and immediate reduction in carbon emissions (to name a few). These are the driving forces behind my political perspective (in the civic sense, that is).

If you examine your own political opinions, I suspect that you'll find desires as well as all of the messy principle/substance motivations that support what can appear to be glossy and impartial procedural positions. There's nothing wrong with this and it certainly doesn't devalue the opinions themselves. In fact, these foundations humanize politics (for my argument is such that purely procedural politics do not, in fact, exist) and the immediately apparent relativism of my claims should be easily made irrelevant (pun intended) by the (obvious) realization that opposing opinions do not "cancel out" your own by the mere fact of their existence. Politics is never so simple, and it is always personal.