March 27, 2007

• Politics and Me

  Almost a week ago, just before my mouseless interlude, slave_slutangel commented (on an entry, Voiceless Echoes, that was about astrology, ESP, and psychology — not about politics at all), “Maybe you should go into politics…we could sure use you!”

  I responded to her suggestion thusly:  “Politics!?! Even if I wanted to, I think a couple of felony convictions
  would be an obstacle. I really don’t think I’d want to be in politics,
  and that’s putting it mildly.”

  To that, JadedFey left a thought-provoking comment that referred to a different kind of politics.  Before I could reply further, I was left without the luxury of a point-and-click input device.  Rather than learning how to navigate with the keyboard, I ordered a new mouse and spent a few days reading.  It struck me as synchronistically appropriate when I came upon this in the book I was reading:

  “I can’t go into politics.  I never learned how to lie with a straight face.”  [Robert Anton Wilson]

  For the next few days (those days now just past) I kept running into political synchronicities, and kept thinking about politics.  The first conclusion I reached was that I am in politics already, just not in government.  I am certainly not apolitical.  I have political opinions and I state them.  I promote organizations whose aims I endorse, and I support causes with which I agree.  I have blogged about my preferred form of government and on how I feel about censorship.

  Exercising my right to freedom of expression is a political act.  I will continue to participate in that kind of political action for as long as I am able.  The political activity in which I have no desire to participate is the kind that requires lying with a straight face.  Political activity, I think, is an unavoidable part of a full and meaningful life.  Politicians are what I think we don’t need.  I’m not alone in that opinion.

  “The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.”  [Maureen Murphy]

  “The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.”  [Larry Hardiman]

  “Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.”  [Lily Tomlin]

  “A good politician under democracy is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”  [H. L. Mencken]

  “The qualities that get a man into power are not those that lead him, once established, to use power wisely.”  [Lyman Bryson]

  “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”  [Aesop]

  Politicians themselves appear to take a dim view of themselves, their profession, and their professional colleagues.

  “I offer my opponents a bargain:  if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.”  [Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952]

  “Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren’t for the goddamned people.”   [Richard M. Nixon]

  “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”  [Thomas Jefferson]

  “In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.”   [Charles de Gaulle]

  “Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.”
   [Eugene McCarthy]

  Of course, there have been those who took a loftier view of the whole subject, or at least a different view.

  “Genuine politics — even politics worthy of the name — the only politics I am willing to devote myself to — is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.”  [Vaclav Havel]

  “My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned, not bought.”  [Margaret Chase Smith]

  “Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”  [Hermann Goering, convicted Nazi war criminal, 18 April 1946, in his prison cell, in conversation with psychologist and intelligence officer Gustave Gilbert]

  Even though more of the politicians I see appear to favor and follow Hermann Goering than Margaret Chase Smith or Vaclav Havel, I still go to the polls, hold my nose, and exercise my right to vote.

  “The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”  [Robert M. Hutchins]

  “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” -and-
  “Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”  [Plato]

  “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”  [Paulo Friere]

  “If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.”  [Noam Chomsky]

  “Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair’s-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?  Oh, it’s just that your life is at stake.   You can’t ignore politics, no matter how much you’d like to.”  [Molly Ivins]

  And, of course, unless and until I am forcibly silenced, I will continue to exercise my right to free speech.

  

  • 10:36 pm
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