Politics is important, but never should be an obsession

Apr 18, 2020 Editorial

Quite a few adults and older children in this country say that they have no interest in nor care anything about politics. That is true as far as it goes, because politics covers almost every aspect of our lives, our plans, our standards and the places to where we aspire and actually go. Politics cares about us, be it for better or for the worse. By any measured and unbiased accounting, the worse has been our story, memory, and history, with still worse feared for our future.
The vital cogs of life: heath care, education, privacy, quality of life, taxes, and employment are influenced and, also powered to a high degree by the politics that operates in any land, even the most individualistic, open, least intrusive communities. It is an absolute right, and it is right, to be engaged and involved intelligently, constructively, and on a principled basis. That is the duty of every citizen, be it from inside the challenging combustion chamber of the machinery, or from the armchair of the periphery.
It is the height of irresponsibility to distance and maintain that there is neither spark for nor drive towards the political affairs of one’s country. It makes no sense to display such indifference for that, which makes so much of a difference, one way or another, in the domain where one exists with the challenges of life, with the political pluses or minuses that help to overcome its burdens or add to them respectively. Children, family, community, and future are all impacted, and in this wasted society, it has been largely to the accumulated deficits of citizens, regardless of which political party has been in power. Changes, if and when they do come, have been so minute as to be unrecognizable, largely meaningless.
That is one side of the political coin, which speaks to the obligations of citizens, which sometimes have to be forced, with the result that, too many times, involvement and interventions come way too late, because things are so far gone as to be irreversible. On the other hand, there is what could only be described, and most accurately, as the obsessions that saturate and dominate many first, then cripple and condemn them all to a slavish existence. Those obsessions intensify to the point of stalking others, of following blindly, of falling for every falsehood and deception and subterfuge and, in process and result, lashing out at neighbour and perceived enemies. This is most unhealthy, so much so that it is unnatural what impassions and imperils in this country.
A great majority of citizens, supporters all, think so much about things political that they are unable to think at all. To think cleanly and constructively; to think beyond the seduction and thrill of the moment, which never ends. Too many have lost control of their senses, of their balance and reasoning, of their independence and of the sum of themselves. Most regrettably, unlike a crippling addiction, there is great joy and pride in displaying publicly the political obsessions by individual and group. It is worn as a badge of special honour, not due to fidelity to the issues of the day, but because of lifelong allegiance to leader and group. This contributes powerfully to the mindless obeisance that has taken hold of soul and society.
In this country, the obsession of racial politics means that there is no place for serious discussion of issues. There is no allowance made to approach honestly and objectively the obstacles that stand in our way to move ahead. There is scornful dismissal of any thinking of, calls for, and investing in, the strategies, energies, and commitments needed to deal constructively with the formidable tasks of racial healing, of nation building, of quality of life enhancing.
When we convert politics into the narrow group and wider local obsessions into what they have become, then that endangers not only body and spirit, but also impairs the ambience of the environment, and the vast promises of this country. Because we are so fanatically fixated with that which sates our lusts for power, or nearness to it, we care not for anything else. Not issues, not prospects, not where the madness leads.

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