Substantive: Concept of the Political

“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy…The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” (p. 26-27)

This quote, to me, summarizes everything we were discussing with Ender’s Game last week. Schmitt proposes that the justifications for war, and the existence of the enemy, come from this notion of otherness, that it is not high-minded values of good and evil that we suggest when we discuss enemies, but a kind of xenophobia, this sense of other. This, Schmitt says, is politics. The very distinction of enmity is what makes politics possible, because that is what political motives can be reduced to. It makes perfect sense, in a way, as to why bipartisan issues seldom get resolved—the whole point of a political system is “Well, my opponent wants this, but I want this.”

“The notions which postulate a just war usually serve a political purpose.” (p. 49)

If we look at the real world, what Schmitt is saying makes a large amount of sense, particularly in the terms of the last presidency, and the war in Iraq. While we can justify war on a level dominated by opposition and capital letters (i.e., Good vs. Evil, Freedom vs. Terrorism) it boils down to pragmatism, and the notion of a just war is just that: a notion. The justification for war as an instrument of “justice” is almost always a cover for something entirely without the bounds of these social mores.

“Never in the thousand-year struggle between Christians and Moslems did it occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks.” (p. 29)

I believe this also goes back to our discussion last week. We talked a great deal about Ender’s love of the buggers, that it is this which enables him to destroy them. And yet Schmitt makes an excellent point here, that this friend/enemy dichotomy creates a situation in which few other actions are possible. Even though Ender loves the buggers, he ultimately destroys them, and the people who are manipulating him choose to do so because they believe that no other choice is possible—because the buggers are other, and therefore enemy, and therefore must be destroyed. I am simplifying matters here, but only because I don’t want to get into the Hierarchy of Foreignness, which we will discuss next week. I understand that Earth attempted to communicate, but I also understand that the final invasion was Earth’s doing, and that lives were lost because humanity had no way of knowing that this other, this alien race, finally understood.