"Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen"
About this Quote
Noonan’s warning lands because it pretends to be a psychological diagnosis while really policing a social type: the person who treats politics not as a civic tool but as a personality. “Beware” frames the politically obsessed less as opponents than as hazards, like a charming drink you shouldn’t accept. She even grants them their best qualities - “bright and interesting” - then flips the knife: those traits are recast as compensations, the glitter around a “hole.”
The subtext is classically Noonan: a suspicion of ideological fervor dressed up as concern for the individual soul. Politics here isn’t wrong because of its content; it’s wrong as a substitute for meaning. That’s a canny move. By relocating the problem from ideas to psychology, she sidesteps policy debate and makes obsession itself the pathology. If you argue back too intensely, you confirm her thesis.
The rhetoric is deliberately physical. “Hole,” “empty place,” “fill it up,” “misshapen” turns civic engagement into body horror: an inner deficiency deforms the outer person. It’s not just critique; it’s stigmatization, implying that too much political intensity produces a warped human, not merely an annoying conversationalist.
Context matters: Noonan’s Reagan-era conservatism and later commentary often elevates restraint, decorum, and the private sphere against the perceived performative cruelty of political life. Read now, it also maps neatly onto social-media politics, where identity, community, and dopamine hits can fuse into a single feed. The line works because it captures a real dynamic - politics as a stand-in for belonging - while quietly flattering the reader as one of the “whole” people looking on.
The subtext is classically Noonan: a suspicion of ideological fervor dressed up as concern for the individual soul. Politics here isn’t wrong because of its content; it’s wrong as a substitute for meaning. That’s a canny move. By relocating the problem from ideas to psychology, she sidesteps policy debate and makes obsession itself the pathology. If you argue back too intensely, you confirm her thesis.
The rhetoric is deliberately physical. “Hole,” “empty place,” “fill it up,” “misshapen” turns civic engagement into body horror: an inner deficiency deforms the outer person. It’s not just critique; it’s stigmatization, implying that too much political intensity produces a warped human, not merely an annoying conversationalist.
Context matters: Noonan’s Reagan-era conservatism and later commentary often elevates restraint, decorum, and the private sphere against the perceived performative cruelty of political life. Read now, it also maps neatly onto social-media politics, where identity, community, and dopamine hits can fuse into a single feed. The line works because it captures a real dynamic - politics as a stand-in for belonging - while quietly flattering the reader as one of the “whole” people looking on.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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