When it is so hard to love politicians,
it may be better to read a bit less about politics.
At first sight you may disagree with the above statement but deep inside I feel there is a huge truth behind it. Whenever I, or we, read about politics, we tend to end up hating more one person. These politicians achieve positions of great power, most often not because they have superbly good intentions. They want to be in power, they want to be rich, they want to control. In order to gain control there is a need to get votes and that is where all the promises come. Promises, they know they cannot keep and quite often promises, they have no intention at all to keep. A close call to be in power and for the sake of a coalition all the promises are thrown overboard.
You may think I am too negative about the people in power, but on average their egos are too big, and they refuse to think about what are the consequences of what they do. Democracy has dramatically improved to odds of avoiding tyrannical abuse, but we the people with our voting right, allow ourselves all too often to be manipulated by the psychological warfare against us. Politicians need to have a reason for you to vote for him or her. So they create fear and discord and blow problems out of proportion, to get our support for their cause. Look at what is happening in America at this very moment! But if we look at any other country, we will find politicians using the same tactics and techniques to create division, targeting minorities so the majority can vote for them. They are aware this is extremely dangerous and has led in the past to Nazism and ethnic cleansing, mass criminal activities against a target group, destroying nations, destroying the majority even more than the murdered minority, since the murderous majority will have to live with the crimes committed in the name of their false-politicians-induced-exaggerations.
Somehow, the limitation of democracy is the psychological manipulation of the voters. We are not always voting for who can lead the country best. After the disaster of the presidency of Ronald Reagan who was an actor and destroyed so many families in so many countries in south America and the rest of the world, who gave a real bad name to America, one would think the Americans would have learned their lesson, but no. Another TV personality comes along and wow, wow, wow, is voted into presidency, no matter how troubled his past how full of scandals his financial and personal situation.
Seriously, when I read politics, I tend to lose my peace of mind. And this is similar for world politics as for the local politics. Politicians, the media and their whole machinery can make us hate each other, can make us hate the persons in power.
I have decided to expose myself much less to reading politics. I will follow it from a certain distance. It is too important to ignore politics as a whole, but we do not need a daily dose of it. If I manage to update myself on a weekly basis, through an hour or two of scanning to websites of all sides of the political divide, I tend to get a much better image, get less absorbed and pulled over, and quite often see through the games of politics played by both sides.
If a political article makes you hate some politicians or makes you hate some groups of people, be careful before you let the intended toxic waste into your mind, heart and soul. It is not easy to remain neutral if people use all psychological tricks on us. I sincerely think the answer is to read less of politics, and to guard our mind from toxic waste as we would guard our garden from toxic waste if one was about to dump it there.
The above may seem to you as quite a negative post. And it is true. It is quite negative. So, perhaps now high time to read some very short essays about good things. Here is the link:
essays on good things
