I frequently hear comment about how bitter and divisive American politics is, and to a degree it’s true: red state/blue state rhetoric can be pretty harsh. But the nasty language may be an example of what Sigmund Freud called “the narcissism of small differences” and serve to obscure just how minor are political differences in the United States compared to many other countries. On a scale of global political difference from 1-100, I’d say that U.S. Republicans and Democrats cover the range all the way from 48 to 52. Oh alright, maybe 47-53 in a pinch. Think about it. How many Green Party candidates are you going to vote for? National parties dedicated to racial purity? Libertarians? Communists? Feuding varieties of socialists? Religious fundamentalists? Will the Monster Raving Loony Party be on any ballot you see? True, Screaming Lord Sutch, founder and long-time leader of the aforementioned party, never did actually get elected to the British parliament, but he got significant votes sometimes, famously in the 1990 Bootle by-election. And perhaps more to the point, all the other political stances I mentioned, and many more, have major leadership roles in national governments around the world. U.S. politics, by comparison, is relentlessly centrist, and any leader who moves far from the center will either be cut off from the mainstream or be inexorably pulled back by the power of the center.

I never voted in any political election until about 10 years ago, and that sense of minor political difference was one reason. I do vote now, and one major reason is that I now reject the narcissism of disdaining small differences. In other words, just because differences may, from some perspectives, be minor doesn’t mean they don’t matter. I ask myself, will the comparatively minor differences between the policies of our presidential candidates make a difference in how the world works? I answer an emphatic yes, and I look forward to voting and thereby expressing my opinion about those small, but significant, differences.