Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes.
Interpretation
Politics operates without clear rules or oversight, making it unpredictable and often chaotic.
In this quote, Michael Ignatieff highlights the complexity and often tumultuous nature of politics, emphasizing that there are no universal rules or authorities to ensure fairness. Unlike a game with a referee, political actions and decisions are often subjective, leading to a landscape where anything can happen without accountability.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the challenges of political reform in a class on political science.
Genocide is not just a murderous madness; it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics - one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.
Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - to do the country's fighting.
Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.
Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People's Republic of China and in Putin's police state.
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.
How do you keep war accountable to the American people when war becomes invisible and virtual?
Persisting social crisis, the emergence of a charismatic personality, and the exploitation of mass media to obtain public confidence would be the steppingstones in the piecemeal transformation of the United States into a highly controlled society.
Damn your principles! Stick to your party.
Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East.
A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.
I do not diminish the incredible symbolic importance of a black man getting elected president. But my euphoria was a smart guy getting elected president. Maybe for the first time in my lifetime we had elected one of the thousand smartest Americans president.
There is an important sense in which government is distinctive from administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the particular principles and methods of administration.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.