This morning I had one of those moments of reminder not to let politics' murky depths suck you down and in, when you're not even in the ring. I'm sure I've allowed just that to happen to me more times than I'd care to know. Somehow seeing it in some others, whom I'd generally agree with, provided me a mirror to see the very same reflected in myself. I hope my comments in response were a warning to myself as well as those I directed them to.

The immediate subject at hand was the departure of recently former opposition leader Peter Dutton from Australian federal politics, at the hand of the very voters who'd put him in. That event itself and the naturally accompanying thoughts about the man by those of us in the conversation. And though not spoken, Senator Jacinta Price was implicitly also in view for me, and possibly others too, given her association with Dutton and her very recent career moves in switching party post election.

The one-word label I'll use for the phenomenon I'm thinking of is dehumanisation. The message: Don't let your participation in the political process, as a voter-consumer, dehumanise you in the way you observe and experience dehumanisation of and by elected politicians. The context of the conversation was the question whether Dutton deserves any sadness or sympathy at all for having suddenly lost his seat and thus his political career (quite apart from his opposition party leadership). Opinions in the conversation varied on that, including a suggestion that he was exclusively in it for self. My actual comment in part was  

... See, I think that's just a bit too black and white cynical. Don't get me wrong; ... I'm anything but [Dutton's] defender. But even so it concerns me if / when our participation in the ... process ... leads us to return the disfavour of dehumanising them. That becomes a particularly egregious irony that stands to diminish us all. Trying to step back from the fray, I find it hard to believe that anyone but perhaps the extremest narcissist (one does come to mind) could really enter politics - let alone stay there for a large slab of their productive life - and not possess even a sliver of humanity that wants to do good.

So what I'm reflecting on is the polarising nature of our fundamentally adversarial democratic political system. I agree with Churchill's famous line that "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. In other words I take it as the system of governing with the fewest and least fatal flaws, meaning I'll live with its adversarial nature (generally two major opposing elected parties). But then a toxic risk of participating in the form of public debate and opinion sharing is that we become as adversarial and extreme about it as the politicians themselves. We (often unconsciously) join even the most zealous or aggressive of them in crediting politicians of the other side with no redeeming human features at all, only the basest of motives, strictly dart-board material, just ... the worst.

Today I remind myself, as we enter this new parliamentary term, to be the best rather than worst version of me, by resisting politics' pull into the bear pit, standing instead for human respect even, nay especially, as a follower of Jesus, finding cause to look for and then respect humanity in those politicians whose policies least attract me.

On that note, back to Dutton and Price themselves. The policies they've advanced, and that the latter no doubt will continue to advance as an aspiring federal leader, are among the most toxic for the country I love and most especially our First Nations peoples. And yet ... And yet it seems to me that buried beneath those inhuman policies, both of them have wanted good for Australian indigenous communities, particularly in the form of facilitating real change in the reduction of rates of domestic violence. Dutton, personally charming or not, was a detective in a domestic violence police unit, which surely produced some social good. He has mentioned that as a policy concern in his political life. Price, at least early in her adult life has sought good in Northern Territory aboriginal communities for safer homes, and when not (alas too often) waging a rightwing culture war now talks about little else. 

Do their concepts of social goodness align with mine? No they do not. But they do want to do and achieve human good, in their terms. That is their humanity.

May our politicians, those we're drawn to and those we're not, rise to the best humanity they can be. And may we help them do that by staying out of the bear pit ourselves.