This nails the issue for me. Extending your argument, perhaps we should define politics today as a humanist endeavor. If conservatives reject humanism, they have no place in politics, just as animals have no place in politics, and MAGA has proven this.

The Catch-22 of humanism is it doesn't like treating some people as animals, even when effectively they *are* animals in the framework you lay out.

The best rationale for treating them as humans is it promises to mitigate their animalism.

Things are infinitely more complicated. Complications don't invalidate principles. They just make implementing principles more complicated.

Thank you for very interesting and very thought-provoking analysis!