MINI-ESSAY 2: On the necessity of Civic Literacy. · 8:13pm Jun 1st, 2014
"Alsvid, politics are for fags. YOU'RE a fag. Buck off."
No, not really. You might as well say reading is for fags, or driving, or, really, any basic component of daily life.
"POLITICS ARE UNRELATED TO LITTLE PONIES."
No, no, no.
The little ponies have political systems or they would not refer to Princess Celestia, or Mayor Mare. They have running water, a working economical system with a form of money, and many other luxuries of life that are generally the realm of....*drumroll*...politics!
Is there not a State of Equestria? That's politics.
Let's introduce this essay with a quotation from Plato. Plato, for those of you who are not quite up to speed with him, was born in Ancient Greece, approximately on 428/427 or 424/423 BC.
He practiced philosophy, mathematics, was a prolific writer of lengthy dialogues, one of the more well known being the Apology - you may be passing familiar of it - organized an early example of a school, and was generally an all around cool-guy who really knew where his towel was. He died, sadly, around 348/347 BC (aged 80). His later dialogues are unpopular, being dense and difficult reads for the uninitiated.
...But the chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse, if a man will not himself hold office and rule.
-Plato, The Republic, 1, 347
Nowadays, we don't necessarily need to hold office, since we enjoy a modern-day democratic society, in which the common man is part and parcel of the governmental mechanisms that form the very axis of our daily existence. This website we are typing on exists only because Political Systems allow it to do so.
The reason why your house, flat, apartment, or whatever isn't being bombed to pieces right now by enemy forces, or collapsing about your ears and killing everyone inside? Politics. That water you just drank? Did it give you diarrhea? No? That's Politics!
However, this system we currently enjoy can also be used as a weapon against us. An example currently underway is the American War On Drugs. Innocent lives are ruined entirely, families torn apart, people shot and killed, and other unmentionable things I won't examine at close detail here, being as they are only tangentially related - you can have an entire essay about the Evils of the Drug War much later.
Law Enforcement Officers march our streets like Military Police straight out of the army, toting heavy-duty front-line infantry gear and weaponry, with the excuse that 'I want to go home safely to my wife and children!' bandied about as a reason why LEOs need all this stockpiled firepower.
Nobody cares about the fact that we ordinary civilians would also like to be able to live with our families, without being utterly terrified of the potentiality of our skulls being cracked like a soft-boiled egg by an irate LEO who felt we didn't move quickly enough, riddled with bullets(Amadou Diallo incident)by LEOs feeling jumpy after that sixth cup of Dunkin' Donuts Coffee, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on.
Open up a newspaper and turn on the TV; there's bound to be a fresh new tale of an over-excited LEO causing someone grievous bodily harm in your town, and I am most likely right. You are unsafe. You are, in fact, in grave danger - as much as if you were on the battlefield of a hostile country. The saddest thing is that the Powers That Be actually, gallingly, callously call this the Drug War.
They openly admit that they are making war on the American Public, to the deafening cheers and applause of the approving American citizens who, in their misguided dislike of the Other, champion deadly war-games like the War on Terrorism, the War on Drugs, while mumbling meaningless platitudes about how These Things Keep Us All Safe, and closing their eyes entirely to the reality of a Country That Makes War On Itself. That's nothing new, though. We had to kick our own asses, just so that we would stop keeping dark-skinned human beings as farm machines and chattel.
To say "I hate Politics!" is like tying a bandage around your eyes, putting plugs in your ears, having someone inject you with a drug that induces paralysis of your hands and feet, and then screaming at me, "NOOOOOOOOO! MY LIFE IS BETTER LIKE THIS!" Worse, it puts you entirely at risk. Not just me, not just your friends, but YOURSELF. You might as well just bang your head furiously against a brick wall, and then scream at me when I indicate that you could, y'know, just stop doing this.
Displaying a lack of interest in politics is a symptom of Civic Illiteracy. Being illiterate is nothing to be proud of; neither should displaying a lack of Civic Literacy be a point of pride for any reasonable individual.
