“I'm not political.” Until they come for you.
You can ignore politics. It won't ignore you. On private comfort, convenient silence, and expecting others to care when it's finally your turn.
“I'm just not interested in politics.”
Fucking fantastic. It's interested in you.
It's interested in how much you earn. What you read. What you write. Where you go. And whether it can send you off to die without spending too much time persuading you.
But go on. Tell me you have other interests.
I understand wanting a quiet life. Working, minding your own business, loving someone, planning a vacation. I don't want to wake up wondering what some assholes with authority have done this time either.
But for some reason, my not wanting to keep an eye on them doesn't make them cease to exist.
That's what pisses me off about your favorite line. You say “I'm not political” as though you've signed a separate agreement with the state. You leave it alone, it leaves you alone. All discussed, hands shaken, everyone goes their separate way.
Especially the clause where it promised to hold up its end.
What does your “not political” usually mean, anyway?
Your job is still paying you. Your card hasn't been blocked yet. Flights are still going somewhere. Your favorite bar still serves a cocktail whose name the bartender pronounces more confidently than you do.
Someone got locked up? Well, we need to know the full story. Something got banned? I didn't use it anyway. Another news outlet shut down? I don't read the news, it's all negativity.
A convenient way to assess what's happening.
As long as nobody has taken anything away from you personally, apparently nothing particularly terrible has happened.
And then you call yourself objective.
This line especially cracks me up:
“Don't drag politics into everyday life.”
In your paycheck and how much of it is left after buying groceries. In your ability to start a business. In your ability to keep it if someone takes a liking to it. In your kid's school. In the passport you're holding at the border.
You can go your entire life without watching a political debate. But when you're banned from leaving the country, nobody is going to take your magnificent detachment into account.
There won't be a separate line for people who just wanted to do graphic design.
And no, I'm not suggesting everyone read the news around the clock.
You can know every minister's surname and still spend your entire life with your tongue up your ass. You can argue in comment sections for eight hours a day and decide that by evening you've practically overthrown a dictatorship.
You just wore yourself the fuck out on the internet.
What interests me is something else. Do you understand the conditions you're living under? Can you see where things are heading? Do you have any line at all beyond which you'll stop explaining to yourself why everything is still fine?
Or can that line always move a little further?
Because right now there's the mortgage. Then an important project. Then your kid starts school. Then it's too late to change anything.
Amazing how life always comes up with a reason to do nothing, right on time.
And yet you're perfectly capable of taking an interest in the rules when you want to protect your money.
Before buying an apartment, you check the paperwork. Before making a deal, you study the contract. If someone owes you ten thousand, suddenly you discover principles, spare time, and the ability to ask uncomfortable questions.
But when it comes to people who can rewrite the rules of your entire life, suddenly it's:
“Oh, I don't understand any of that.”
You spent half the evening comparing two practically identical phones. Doesn't the way your own life works deserve at least as much attention?
There's another version. A more honest one.
“I understand everything. I'm just scared.”
Scared of losing your job. Scared for the people you love. Scared they really will come for you over something you said. There are circumstances where any action comes at a steep price, and telling someone from a place of safety how nobly they should risk their life is cheap.
I'm scared. I'm dependent. I don't see a way out yet.
Why put on this cardboard crown of someone who's supposedly too busy with real life to bother with some silly thing called politics?
You understand everything, and you're trying not to look.
At least stop bullshitting yourself.
And sometimes it isn't even fear.
You're just benefiting from it.
A good position. Useful connections. A contract you don't want to give up. The chance to live a little better if you know when not to ask another question.
That's when you really need a philosophy.
“It's complicated.” “We don't know the whole truth.” “Nothing we do makes a difference.”
Funny how many intellectual obstacles appear between a person and the obvious when the obvious might fuck with their income.
You can choose money. People choose money all the time.
But don't pretend afterward that you never made a choice at all.
Then one day, something happens that affects you directly.
Not someone in the news. Not a distant acquaintance. Not somebody else's son.
And suddenly it turns out laws can be unjust. The state can lie. The TV is spouting some completely fucking deranged shit. Human rights, apparently, are actually pretty useful.
“Why isn't anyone doing anything?”
Everyone has a job. A family. A loan. They're not interested in politics.
You were the one explaining how normal that was.
That's exactly why this smug “it doesn't concern me” disgusts me so much.
Because today people say it about someone else's disaster. Tomorrow that same line is waiting for yours.
You spent years being glad the trouble was happening to someone else. Got used to scrolling past, closing the tab, changing the channel. Then you found yourself in a news story everyone else scrolls past just as calmly over breakfast.
You really want them to be more attentive than you were.
To somehow stop being “not political” just for you.
I don't expect everyone to become a hero. But an adult should at least understand the cost of political apathy before calling it a neutral position.
Silence can be a way to survive. Leaving can be a way to refuse to participate. Preparing to leave can take time. Helping others doesn't require a public report at all.
But the fairy tale about living in a separate reality where what's happening around you has nothing to do with you is always the same.
You can stay out of the conversation.
You can even ban your friends from discussing any of it in your kitchen because you don't want to spoil the evening.
But when there's a knock at the door, “we don't talk politics here” somehow isn't going to help.