When political ambition turns human pain into ammunition, we stop debating ideas and start destroying people, forgetting that words can wound long after cameras disappear.
I have spent enough years in the unforgiving glare of national politics to know something most people watching from the outside never truly understand: public humiliation hurts.
Not metaphorically. Not politically. Humanly.
There is a particular kind of cruelty that comes with having your name, your character, your family, or your personal life turned into ammunition for somebody else’s political victory. I know what it feels like to sit there while commentators who have never met you, never walked in your shoes, are factually inaccurate, and never experienced your private struggles reduce an entire human being to a punchline, a headline, or a convenient piece of political ammunition.
And that is why what I have watched unfold recently has left me deeply troubled.
The human mind is not a machine. The human spirit is not an indestructible piece of political infrastructure. Every person has a breaking point, even if nobody watching television knows where that point is.
I have seen depression up close. I have seen what grief can do to a person. I have seen how darkness can descend quietly, without warning, and how someone can look perfectly functional to the outside world while fighting an internal battle nobody else can see.
That is precisely why I find the weaponization of personal attacks in American politics so disturbing. It is why I find the personal attacks on platforms like Substack, X, TikTok and others so reprehensible.
There is a difference between holding powerful people accountable and deliberately humiliating people who happen to stand near them.
There is a difference between exposing hypocrisy and manufacturing insinuation.
There is a difference between legitimate political criticism and taking an individual who may have little or no control over the larger political fight and dragging that person into the public square simply because doing so generates clicks, laughs, applause, or partisan outrage.
I know that distinction because I have lived on both sides of it.
I have been the target. I have also participated in the political machinery that produces these kinds of battles. I understand the temptation. I understand the adrenaline. I understand how intoxicating it can become when a clever line lands, the cameras turn toward you, social media erupts, and suddenly everybody is talking about you.
But there is something profoundly pathetic about winning a political moment by making another human being smaller.
That is what troubles me about Senator Jon Ossoff’s recent attacks involving President Trump and Natalie Harp, a young female aide. Whatever one’s political feelings about Trump, there is a legitimate question we should all ask: what exactly is accomplished by dragging a staffer into a political attack when the underlying dispute can be argued on policy, performance, leadership, or principle?
If the argument is strong enough, make the argument.
If the evidence is compelling, present the evidence.
If the president has failed, explain the failure.
But when political rhetoric starts reaching into the personal lives and relationships of people surrounding a public figure, I think we have crossed into something uglier.
And I don’t care which party is doing it.
That matters.
Because we have somehow created a political culture in which compassion is celebrated in theory and abandoned the moment compassion becomes inconvenient.
We tell our children to be kind. We tell people struggling with depression that they are not alone. We tell victims of bullying that words matter.
Then we turn on cable television and watch grown adults make careers out of humiliation.
We click.
We share.
We laugh.
We rage.
And then we act surprised when the culture becomes crueler.
The media bears responsibility for this, too.
When commentators take an inflammatory political remark and amplify it without considering the human consequences, they are not merely reporting the news. They are helping manufacture the spectacle.
Every insinuation becomes another segment.
Every personal jab becomes another chyron.
Every humiliation becomes content.
And somewhere behind the television screen is an actual human being who has to live with the consequences after the cameras shut off.
That is the part we seem to forget.
A politician goes home.
A television host signs off.
A social-media audience moves on to the next outrage.
But the person who became the target doesn’t necessarily get to move on.
The internet doesn’t forget.
The humiliation doesn’t necessarily disappear.
And neither does the psychological damage.
Traditional conservatism, at least the conservatism I understand, was never supposed to be about cruelty masquerading as strength. It was supposed to recognize the dignity of the individual, the importance of personal responsibility, the value of restraint, and the limitations of government and political power.
Those principles should apply even when the person standing across the political aisle makes our blood boil.
In fact, that is precisely when they matter most.
It takes absolutely no courage to show compassion toward somebody you like.
The real test is whether we can show restraint toward somebody we despise.
I am not suggesting politicians should be protected from criticism. They shouldn’t. Public officials voluntarily enter an arena where their decisions deserve scrutiny, sometimes brutal scrutiny.
I certainly know that better than most.
But public service should not mean surrendering every shred of human dignity, and working for a controversial politician should not automatically make someone fair game for whatever personal insinuation happens to generate the loudest applause.
We have to stop pretending that cruelty becomes acceptable simply because it is politically useful.
It doesn’t.
And I worry about where this road ultimately leads.
Because if we continue building a political culture where humiliation is currency, where personal destruction is entertainment, and where the most vicious person in the room is rewarded with the largest microphone, eventually decent people will stop wanting anything to do with public life.
Why would they volunteer to have their families targeted?
Why would they expose themselves to relentless personal attacks?
Why would a young person enter government knowing that one political disagreement could turn their private life into tomorrow morning’s television spectacle?
We should be careful about the culture we are creating.
Political victories are temporary.
Election cycles end.
Politicians leave office.
Cable news moves on.
But words can remain lodged inside a person’s head for years.
I know.
I have lived through the furnace of public judgment. I know what it feels like to have strangers decide who you are before they ever bother learning your true story. I know what it is like to have your humanity disappear behind a headline.
And that experience taught me something I wish our political class would remember:
There is always a human being behind the headline.
Always.
So criticize the president. Challenge the senator. Attack the policy. Expose the hypocrisy. Fight like hell over the issues that matter.
But before turning another person’s dignity into political ammunition, remember that the person you are attacking has a heart, a family, fears, insecurities, and a breaking point you cannot see.
Politics is supposed to be a battle over ideas.
The moment we turn it into a sport where the objective is destroying people, we haven’t strengthened democracy.
We have simply become better at hurting one another.
And that is a victory nobody should be proud of.