The question of purity tests

When people argue about "purity tests" in politics, it’s to dodge accepting uncomfortable compromises.

“We do not have the luxury this election of ‘purity tests,’” the Very Serious Person says, and everyone nods sagely. It’s hard to disagree.

Hard because it’s designed that way. It divides the group, sparking a little frisson of superiority of Us (the Reasonable) over Them (the Selfish People). Disagreeing automatically marks you as Selfish, so instead of that tingle of self-regard you get the tiny needle-pricks of shame.

If we drop the us-and-them phraseology, the statement is crushingly dull: politics requires compromise. There’s just nowhere to go after that. You can no more start a conversation with “politics requires compromise” than you can “look, a pigeon.”

No one’s going to retweet “politics requires compromise,” is what I’m saying. What are you going to say? “Well, actually, politics does not require compromise.”

I mean, sure, you can go there if you’re sufficiently bored. “Compromise” is a necessary component of politics, but so is steadfastness. There’s a song about it¹. The deeper questions are: When do you hold ’em? When do you fold ’em?

But then you are talking about tactics in the abstract, not the real subject.

Oops, we changed the subject.

What was the subject anyway? It can be hard to tell, because you probably hear this in a small group where the implicit assumption is that everyone agrees. Or on social media, where this argument is deployed as subtweeting or vaguebooking.

But if we can add in the missing context for a moment…

”I cannot support politicians who back genocide in Palestine.”

“We do not have the luxury of ‘purity tests.’"

"I won’t vote for anti-trans politicians.”

“We do not have the luxury of ‘purity tests.’"

"I’ll stay home before I support politicians who won’t back reproductive rights.”

“We do not have the luxury of ‘purity tests.’"

"We should be housing the homeless, not pushing them out to other communities sending them to prison camps.”

“We do not have the luxury of ‘purity tests.’”

Pushed so close together, those arguments are total yuck. These are not selfish issues. They are certainly not so-called “single issues.” They are issues rooted in empathy and a respect for human rights.

You have to sneak up on those arguments, because once you admit that’s what you’re talking about, you sound like someone who’d push their girlfriend into the arms of the zombie horde. That certainly won’t give you that frisson of superiority. No, that makes you look like a bad person. That’s those needles of shame. Other people are supposed to feel those.

So, what is this argument for?

This argument is best deployed at a distance from any context, because the context makes the position distasteful. The audience is the voting public who may be nominally for recognition of trans people, forcing a stop to genocide “way over there,” reproductive rights, or just generally taking care of people at the margins.

The goal is to make the choice to support a politician who is willing to sacrifice other people far more palatable, to make it feel more high-minded and reasonable than the real arguments: I am not “x,” so “x” people will just have to take care of themselves.

Don’t want to let this argument slip by unchallenged? Want to make it clear what’s going on? Just say:

“I don’t understand. What purity tests are you talking about?”

Bring the context back into the conversation. Make people think about, admit, what they are actually saying.