Politics is so personal, vicious and immediate, how are you

When Robin Williams lamented, “Politics is so personal, vicious and immediate, how are you going to get anything done? Even the local politics where I live have gotten so ugly,” he revealed the tragic paradox of public life. Politics, meant to be the art of governance and service, often descends into bitterness, where rivalries become personal feuds, and venom consumes the energy meant for building and healing. In such storms of hostility, the true work of justice and progress is buried beneath quarrels of ego.

The ancients saw this same corruption. In the Athenian assembly, the clash of voices often grew so heated that truth itself was lost, and men sought victory not through reason but through insult. Socrates himself, devoted to wisdom, was condemned in such an atmosphere of vicious politics. Robin’s words echo this ancient sorrow: when governance becomes too immediate, too personal, the greater good is forgotten, and the city suffers.

History provides grim testimony. During the fall of the Roman Republic, politics turned savage and bloody. Senators who once debated policy now wielded daggers; Caesar fell beneath them, slain not in a war of nations, but in the poisonous feuds of his peers. The Republic, instead of advancing, crumbled beneath the weight of personal vendettas. So too in our own day, even the local politics of neighborhoods and towns mirror this same ugliness, as Williams observed.

Yet his words are not only a lament—they are a warning. When politics is consumed by hatred, it ceases to be politics at all. It becomes theater, a battleground for pride, a place where nothing lasting can be achieved. The immediacy of insult blinds leaders to the long vision, the building of institutions, the nurturing of peace. What should serve the people becomes a spectacle of anger, leaving communities wounded and weary.

Thus, let his wisdom endure for the generations: guard against the ugliness of politics, for it is a thief of progress. Let those who govern rise above the personal, resist the vicious, and remember that their task is not to destroy, but to build. For though politics will always be contentious, it must not be consumed by malice. The measure of a nation is found not in the ferocity of its quarrels, but in its ability to find harmony amidst them, and to act for the good of all.