YouTuber Wade Stotts of The Wade Show with Wade concisely uses the “Friend-Enemy distinction” to explain the political environment Americans have now found themselves in.
“Carl Schmitt wrote an essay in 1932 The Concept of the Political,” says Stotts. “According to Schmitt, politics isn’t about debates and issues and process. For him it’s all about friends vs enemies. For Schmitt, a group of people get together because they want to preserve a certain way of life. Anyone else who also wants to preserve that way of life is your friend. When another group rises up and endangers what you’ve built, that group is the enemy.”
“And once friends and enemies have been identified, that’s when something becomes political.”
Stotts goes on to explain how former President Trump was able to ascend in politics due to his ability to frame issues.
“Trump didn’t start [this],” said Stotts. “He just recognized he was in a fight and started punching back.”
“The Left understands the Friend-Enemy dynamic. And they don’t give people positions of power because they’re competent, they give them positions of power because they’re useful.
People get mad that ‘everything is political now.’ But it’s always been political at some level. We just had a story in our head that made it hard to see what was going on. It’s our fault for believing the story. There’s been a war going on and we just noticed. That’s on us.”
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