Do you miss Parks and Recreation? A lot of other people do too. One guy misses it in particular because it portrays a kind of political discourse that we just don’t have these days. This video above, entitled “The Politics of Parks and Rec,” discusses how libertarian Ron Swanson and progressive liberal Leslie Knope were able to be friends, in spite of having completely different belief systems.
Interspersed with funny clips from the show, the narrator explains that this friendships works because Leslie and Ron have mutual respect, which is something that few people on opposing sides display anymore:
But it says something about the discourse in the U.S. right now that this distance from reality needs to be created in order to build a believable friendship between two people with different politics, even in a sitcom. It helps us believe that beneath it all, there’s something that works here, and that thing, I think, is just respect. They value each other’s convictions even though they don’t always share the same goals, and they almost never share the same opinions, except about breakfast food.
The narrator laments how politics have become so intertwined with identity that there’s no tolerance for different opinions anymore. Of course, he concedes that the show stays out of truly contentious issues like guns and abortion, but the point is still a provocative one.
