Stetson’s Reviews > The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America > Status Update
Stetson
is 40% done
The essential vs social argument makes the single political axis look false but it starts to look like a less compelling rebuttal when the authors have to address some latent human psychological tendencies like circle of care, hierarchy, equality, etc.
— Jan 29, 2026 02:55PM
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Joe
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Jan 29, 2026 04:34PM
Been wanting to read this for a while. Looking forward to your thoughts about it.
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It's a persuasive argument, but it also treats partisanship as a special form of tribalism and doesn't properly anchor on the actual purpose of politics. They say "politics is about making people's lives better" which is the most non-definition of definitions. It also doesn't really present an alternative. I'm not finished yet so maybe they can provide a better map of what American political tribes would naturally look like today, but this would seem like it'd make for a much longer book. Seems like it's definitely not coming.
On the plus side the rope in some good criticism of things like Adorno's authoritarian personality, critique moral foundations/genetic prediction of personality as standins for explaining our left and right.
But the further this critique goes the more important it becomes to actual define what politics is and what it can be expected to look like given that humans are social animals with certain default tendencies and now a long history of civilization.
