This is what a huge, all powerful state does: makes power so important that everything is politicized

Nick Gillespie of Reason speaks to the horror of a completely politicized culture:

How do you take one of the most shocking and revolting murder sprees in memory and make it even more disturbing? By immediately pouncing on its supposed root causes for the most transparently partisan of gains.

Instantaneous bitch-tweeting online (within moments of the shooting, it seems, messages such as “Sarah Palin has blood on her hands” were all over the place) is one thing. Stories filled with actual Democratic Party players such as Paul Begala going on about what an “opportunity” the shooting presents Obama politically aren’t going to help the Dems or anyone else in the long run. . . . The problem isn’t with the current moment’s rhetoric, it’s with the goddamn politicization of every goddamn thing not even for a higher purpose or broader fight but for the cheapest moment-by-moment partisan advantage. Whether on the left or on the right, there’s a totalist mentality that everything can and should be explained first and foremost as to whether it helps or hurt the party of choice.

That sort of clearly calculated punditry helps explain one of last week’s other big stories, which is how both the Dems and the GOP have really bad brand loyalty these days.

When your prosperity and perhaps even your freedom (Tom Delay would not have been charged, much less convicted if a Republican had held the Travis County DA's chair) depend on holding power then everything, even horrible things that are transparently not political, must be politicized:  too much is at stake.  Like in the decadent phases of the Roman Republic, it has become impossible to separate the political realm from everything else because everything influences access to power and the tendrils of the state permeate everything we do.

We cannot escape politics because we cannot escape the state.

Hat tip Instapundit.