Your Politics Won't Save You

You know, I think a lot about politics for someone who doesn't consider themself political.

Not even thinking about "who's right" or "who's wrong", just thinking about why and how politics went from something that people only gave a shit about every four years at max to something everyone is talking about 24/7.

It didn't used to be like this, I'm certain of it. There was a time when people didn't know what was going on a county over, much less a state away, even less a country away. War was always in the back of people's minds, not at the forefront of every conversation with every random passerby you met on the street on any given day. There was a time when what was going on in the house down the street was completely unknown, those days are long gone.

But why though? For what purpose did people throw away their willing ignorance of the plights that plague society, and start obsessing over their choice of stuffed shirt who claims they'll right every wrong and turn the ship around once and for all?

I personally blame the algorithms, social media, the InterNet at large - you know the rigamarole, I won't bore you with it.

I think the moment that I truly stopped being political was when the winds started picking up. It was about 3 years ago, and a bunch of supercell storms were on their way to my neck of the woods, and I was bunkered down in the flimsiest concrete room we could get to as a storm that had produced multiple F5 tornadoes barreled over us. There, surrounded by my closest family members, I realized that no one in office at any point in the hierarchy could stop something like that. They couldn't save anyone who was swept away by the storm, they couldn't mitigate any of the damage done to homes and property that had already been done, and at the end of the day - no matter what - there would always be a fish that was too big for them to fry. At that moment I realized that there was a lot of shit that I should be worried about - but none of it was political.

Go ahead, pick a side, stick with them, buy a hat and put a sign out on your front lawn, pound the pavement and try to rally some support and tell yourself "We'll really get 'em this time" - none of it's gonna help you when it starts raining and the ceiling starts leaking, and the roads start flooding, and the neighborhood starts getting swept away by a tidal wave that no one was prepared for, because they were too busy fighting over "this guy" or "that guy".

If only you knew how different things could be.