Politics & Power Quote by Jared Diamond

Diamond is doing something deceptively political by insisting he is not. The line is an appeal to the reader who flinches at ideology: I did the work, I kept the channel clear, don’t make me fight your team identity to get you to look at the evidence. For an author whose brand is big-history synthesis and cross-disciplinary explanation, “keeping the lines of communication open” is less a kumbaya gesture than a tactical choice about reach. He’s signaling that the book’s stakes are public-facing: if the information matters, it’s wasted if it only circulates inside one tribe.

The subtext is a recognition of how knowledge travels now. Facts don’t simply persuade; they get sorted. “Partisan political reasons” isn’t just about politicians or cable news, it’s about the reader’s reflex to treat certain topics (environment, inequality, institutions, collapse) as pre-labeled culture-war property. Diamond is trying to preempt the dismissal mechanism: before you decide this is “for them,” consider that the argument is meant to be legible across camps.

There’s also a quiet self-defense embedded here. By foregrounding neutrality, he anticipates the criticism that his kind of panoramic storytelling smuggles values under the guise of explanation. He wants to be seen as translating complex systems, not prosecuting a case. The risk is that the very act of announcing nonpartisanship reads like a rhetorical move - and it is one. But it’s a move born from the practical reality of writing in an era when the hardest part of changing minds is getting people to keep reading.