Get Your Politics On
Man is by nature a political animal. Aristotle
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The family members who keep a close eye on my tall tales might remember differently but I don’t remember my parents talking politics around the dining table. I remember being told to keep my elbows off the table and to mind my “boardinghouse reach” but no political grist.
I know my parents voted. I know my father, especially, kept current with news because he’s the reason I compulsively subscribed to the newspaper for most of my adult life. We’d receive the Dallas Morning News in the morning and the Dallas Time Herald in the afternoon and my father would faithfully consume them. Front to back. As I got older, it was clear to me where their politics lay, but I still don’t remember family political discussions.
I know a lot of people steer clear of talking religion and politics no matter what the situation and, I will admit, I censor myself under the right circumstances.
Sometimes I do it so as not to offend.
Sometimes I do it so as not to rain on whatever parade is happening.
Sometimes I do it so as not to get myself into a lather when I know my debating skills are the equivalent of “I’m rubber and you’re glue. What bounces off me, sticks to you!”
But, it should be clear to each and every one of you by now, nearly four years into a political earthquake and four months into a worldwide plague, that none of us, or our principles or our pet concerns are immune to what happens politically.
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
What set me off down this path this morning was the podcast, Rabbit Hole. Produced by the New York Times, today’s hour long episode was a continuation of the previous week when the listener was introduced to Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, a Swedish YouTuber.
The first I heard of this guy - I’m guessing he is a 30-something - was immediately following the Christchurch, New Zealand massacre which, if you have forgotten due to the daily deluge of things we don’t need to know, was a white nationalist who murdered dozens of people attending a mosque in cold blood while live-streaming the shooting on social media. One of the last things he said on the live stream was, “Subscribe to PewDiePie”.
Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, was interviewed by the host of Rabbit Hole not long after the attack in Christchurch happened. Felix’s YouTube channel, as you might expect, had drawn even more attention than normal. At the time of the interview, he had 30 million subscribers. To put that in perspective, the New York Times has 4 million subscribers.
The “Subscribe to PewDiePie” was a viral promotional campaign being waged prior to the atrocity in New Zealand. But, what also happened prior to the atrocity, was Felix’s YouTube channel posted a video of two people Felix had paid, via a website called Fiverr, to hold up a sign that said “Death to all Jews!” He later said it was a joke to show how crazy the web could be. You could pay people to do damn near anything.
In his Rabbit Hole interview, he was asked about his politics. And this is the sole reason I have drawn your attention to Felix.
He says he does not think about politics. He is apolitical.
I call bullshit. He may think he is apolitical, but that is no longer possible.
You are getting paid millions and reaching tens of millions of people every day. (I may have imagined this but I think I heard this morning that EVERY SINGLE day the world’s population watches 14,000 years of YouTube videos!) I am sorry. You need to think politically. As in politically conscious. Because something about Felix’s channel resonated with a guy who chose to murder a whole bunch of people and, while doing so, give his commercial YouTube enterprise a shout-out.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Plato
We have an infantile president, abusing the integrity of his office every time he tweets, no matter what he tweets, and who also has the eyes of tens of millions of followers. We know how that works out. Those followers are drinking bleach, taking untested remedies for coronavirus, spurning the use of masks, becoming more and more animated about the horrors of voting by mail, questioning contact tracing as a Deep State plot and abusing people of color either simply because, or they’re vaguely Asian and thereby responsible for the pandemic.
The occupant of the White House is a social influencer of the greatest magnitude. He poses a threat to our very existence. It’s his politics - coupled with his virulent strain of narcissism - that are the threat.
You need to be political.
Because everyone out there that sides against you has no qualms about wearing politics on their sleeves. The rabid anti-government Tea Party that arose during the Obama era is getting a second wind. They’re being loud about masks, mask policies, church closures and voting by mail. They’re being whipped into a frenzy on social media about the government trying to monitor them for nefarious reasons.
Some of this is grass roots. Some of this is astro turfing. What does it matter? It exists.
We brought a Blue Wave in the 2018 mid term elections and, without it, things could be much worse. It needs to be a Blue Tsunami in 2020, and the tsunami wave needs to sweep the transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government along with its enablers out to sea.
And, when that is accomplished, you need to remain political in order to bend those who have the propensity to succumb to the siren song of the DC swamp to the political will of the people who elected them. You will do that by being politically minded good citizens.
Not by making PewDiePie filthy rich by watching a year’s worth of YouTube videos.
###
This video is for Molly Saling who loves my “This is what else you need to know today” portion of the column more than anything. Apparently, from what I can gather, there is more than one cat soccer goalie star.
Also, sent to me by multiple alert readers (Rodney Hitchcock and Scooter Metcalfe) this is a 26 minute video that speaks to my previous column - Outlive the Bastards. Truly worth your time if you like inspirational stories.