Politics & Power Quote by Judith Martin

Martin’s trick here is to smuggle a live wire of political critique into the apparently fussy world of etiquette. By invoking “Miss Manners,” she uses her own persona as a kind of diplomatic cover: the voice that usually adjudicates forks and thank-you notes suddenly redraws the national map. That’s the intent - to reframe politics not as an abstract clash of ideologies, but as a question of social control versus social privacy.

The subtext is sharper than it first appears. “Basic political division” is an audacious claim, and she knows it. The line works because it refuses the comforting story Americans tell about themselves: that our arguments are mainly about taxes, budgets, and the proper size of government. Martin points to a more intimate battleground, where power isn’t exercised through legislation alone but through permission structures: who gets to love, marry, sleep with, display affection, form a family, or simply exist without commentary.

“Love lives of strangers” is doing heavy lifting. It’s a shaming phrase, delicately weaponized. It suggests voyeurism, entitlement, and a failure of imagination - the belief that your moral preferences deserve jurisdiction over people you will never meet. Coming from an etiquette authority, it also reframes tolerance as manners: minding your business becomes not just liberal virtue but basic decency.

Context matters: Martin wrote through decades when sexuality, marriage, and gender roles were repeatedly relitigated in public, from the culture wars of the late 20th century to today’s fights over LGBTQ rights. She’s telling readers that the loudest “values” debates often aren’t about values at all; they’re about who gets to police whose life.