Basketball Jones
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2018
I remember in high school I had a friend who always talked about politics with me despite me having a pretty personal rule about not talking about religion, sex, or politics in a group of people. I didn’t mind everyone discussing their ideas or what they believed in, as long as it was only that—discussion...but she would always attempt to debate anyone with a different set of ideas than her.
Years later, everyone I know that was faking being an intellectual is still faking at being an intellectual and tries to make everything political. Regardless of where they sat on the political spectrum, they grew into narrow-minded consumers who only found joy when they were being told what to do and how to think.
These people hate anyone“apolitical” because it implies that there is more to life than elevating your blood pressure to politics. Being political is what makes them
feel like a person with an identity. But what they lack is a sense of self, a personality, a hobby, a passion, and the ability to find joy in their own way without the TV, radio, or their phone telling them. They were all emotionally stunted in some way (a lot of them had dysfunctional households), and they never faced their own inner conflict because they were too insecure in their own thoughts to even begin questioning the dysfunction.
In short, being apolitical is seen as a threat to an insecure person’s worldview and identity. It forces them to question how someone can be confident, happy, funny, smart, free-thinking, or even a person if they aren’t living a life drenched in politics. What’s scarier than realizing: if everything isn’t political and there is more to life than politics, then what am I doing with my life?
Before we could even legally vote, she was railing on about Bush on a carpool ride home (she drove me and a couple of friends home because we lived close by), and I suggested that maybe she should turn NPR off while she was driving if it was going to make her this heated. I mostly just didn’t care, and knew this was her trying to bait for a fight. When I told her—again—that I didn’t like talking about politics in mixed company, she smugly turned to me and said, “sounds like something a Republican would say.”
I calmly reached over and turned off the radio, and then turned to her and unleashed a barrage of estrogen-laden fury at her. The main points of the verbal assassination were: “I’m not a Republican or a Democrat because as far as I can tell both sides are retarded, with every Dem I know being the worst offender of the two,” “I don’t think it’s worth discussing because we’re 16 and can’t vote,” “you don’t want to talk you want to fight because you have this need to feel right even though all your talking points are “fuck Bush,” “Republicans bad,” and “you’re wrong and dumb for thinking that,”” and finally “I don’t need to pretend to be interested in politics to try and convince people I’m smart because I know neither of us could find Afghanistan on a fucking map and don’t know shit about the economy.”
She cried and it was never brought up again.
I calmly reached over and turned off the radio, and then turned to her and unleashed a barrage of estrogen-laden fury at her. The main points of the verbal assassination were: “I’m not a Republican or a Democrat because as far as I can tell both sides are retarded, with every Dem I know being the worst offender of the two,” “I don’t think it’s worth discussing because we’re 16 and can’t vote,” “you don’t want to talk you want to fight because you have this need to feel right even though all your talking points are “fuck Bush,” “Republicans bad,” and “you’re wrong and dumb for thinking that,”” and finally “I don’t need to pretend to be interested in politics to try and convince people I’m smart because I know neither of us could find Afghanistan on a fucking map and don’t know shit about the economy.”
She cried and it was never brought up again.
Years later, everyone I know that was faking being an intellectual is still faking at being an intellectual and tries to make everything political. Regardless of where they sat on the political spectrum, they grew into narrow-minded consumers who only found joy when they were being told what to do and how to think.
These people hate anyone“apolitical” because it implies that there is more to life than elevating your blood pressure to politics. Being political is what makes them
feel like a person with an identity. But what they lack is a sense of self, a personality, a hobby, a passion, and the ability to find joy in their own way without the TV, radio, or their phone telling them. They were all emotionally stunted in some way (a lot of them had dysfunctional households), and they never faced their own inner conflict because they were too insecure in their own thoughts to even begin questioning the dysfunction.
In short, being apolitical is seen as a threat to an insecure person’s worldview and identity. It forces them to question how someone can be confident, happy, funny, smart, free-thinking, or even a person if they aren’t living a life drenched in politics. What’s scarier than realizing: if everything isn’t political and there is more to life than politics, then what am I doing with my life?
