On the other there are people who worry that high-flying elites might end up controlling public life, monopolizing every advantage, and dictating terms of social interaction to everyone else. On the one side are those who aim to climb to high and higher up social and economic ladders. “In any city whatever” and in states big or small, Machiavelli says, one sees frictions between two kinds of people. So are desires, fears, and patterns of behaviour that seem rooted in unchanging human nature. Historical memories are among the stubborn realities that can kick back against political ideals. Machiavelli’s realities aren’t just “hard facts” that anyone of sound mind can agree on.

Five centuries ago, the infamous Italian political philosopher declared that it is “more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it.” As a civil servant in the Republic of Florence and through his writings-which include political treatises like The Prince but also wickedly satirical plays, poems about Ambition and Fortune, and histories-Machiavelli spent much of his life urging leaders and citizens to develop a robust sense of the realities that shape politics, however ugly they might be.

Maybe it’s time to seek help from the man widely hailed as the father of modern realpolitik, Niccolò Machiavelli. With our newsfeeds flooded with “fake news,” “post-truth,” and “alternative facts,” it seems harder than ever to know what’s real in politics, or to tell a realistic policy from a crowd-pleasing fantasy.

Be Like the Fox by Erica Benner