7 ms·
There is no such thing as "apolitical."
by stonogo 7y ago
There is no such thing as "apolitical."
- p1necone 7y agoYes, in my experience people that say things like "no need to drag politics into this" really mean "no need to drag political opinions that are different from my own into this".
- jimmaswell 7y agoI'd rather not have annoying protestors disrupting the education I paid for and bugging me with pamphlets even if I agree. I counter-protested some annoying walk-out over the election result at college with a "Krusty Krab Unfair" sign and some of them got mad at me, so at least I got back at them a little. Outrageous that some professors weren't counting absences though.
- p1necone 7y agoWay to prove my point. You wanting to deny others right to peaceful assembly is you getting political. You just don't realize because you (obviously) agree with yourself.
- corndoge 7y agoPlease peacefully assemble 100 feet outside of somewhere I didn't pay tens of thousands to be.
- gaze 7y agoProtest doesn’t work unless it it causes extreme inconvenience. You’re telling the protestors not to protest. Americans have a completely impotent understanding of protest. Protest and asking nicely are NOT the same thing. You do the former when the latter doesn’t work.
- jimmaswell 7y agoNot sure about anyone else but disruptive protest has the opposite effect of its intention on me. It inclines me to like the movement less if people are going of their way to inconvenience me in its name.
- spamizbad 7y agoYou're going to rip some refugee family apart to invisibly spite some trust fund kid protester who is fully insulated from any negative externalities of Palantir?
- forgotmylogin2 7y agoYou want to have your cake and eat it too. You can't both be a jerk to people and expect them to also support your cause simply because you aren't the beneficiary of your cause.
- gaze 7y agoThe victims have already "asked nicely" for people to support their cause. Tupac explains this well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0XMJMphPT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0XMJMphPT4
- flukus 7y ago> Protest doesn’t work unless it it causes extreme inconvenience Extreme inconvenience for who/what you are protesting, inconveniencing the average Joe is counter productive and will turn them against you. You're right though, apart from in some mythologized version of the Indian independence movement peaceful protest has never done jack. You need to throw your body on the gears and the levers etc.
- roenxi 7y agoOr you could try engaging with the system directly? There are a lot of political movements that achieve a huge amount without getting serious about protests. Any modern democracy gives people the option to get involved with shaping how the government works. Waving the broad brush of generalisations, usually the people protesting are doing so because is because they have no chance of getting the numbers to effect change - because the majority simply doesn't care about whatever their special interest it, or will actively resist it because it is secretly a fringe issue. If they have a chance of capturing majority opinion, they'd be too busy using effective channels rather than protesting.
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- roenxi 7y agoIf you are absolutely determined to inconvenience other people then congratulations; everything can be political because you have the power to make it so. However this is a hostile approach. If you can't get results through the usual political channels, trying to inconvenience the neutrals into compliance is a dodgy way of proceeding. I'll accept that nobody in politics plays fairly, but the people being harassed by an organised protest are completely reasonable in claiming that they were apolitical and the protestors are forcing politics upon them. We have a word, 'apolitical', because it is a possible state someone's opinions can be in.
- toasterlovin 7y agoOr we just don’t need politics to infest every aspect of life, public and private. Voting only happens every other year.
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- yesco 7y agoThink of it another way, if we divide it purely on political party there is about a 50% chance you and the person you are speaking too are going to be different. Assuming you even are the same political party, you still are going to likely disagree about which issues that party should prioritize or even the direction the party as a whole should be going (even that is grossly simplifying the depth of the nuance). Now consider there are multiple people present, for every single person the odds of someone disagreeing and feeling alienated increases. It is more or less guaranteed that a rift in the group will come out of this, something very much undesired by the people asking you "to not bring politics into this". Finally consider you and the other person do by chance agree, using myself as an example: If I'm telling you "not to bring politics into this", it's because it's going to completely derail an otherwise productive conversation into mutual masturbation over each others ideals, something I don't have the stomach or time for.
- ng12 7y agoOr maybe they just want to come to work, write some code, get a paycheck, and go home. I don't know what any of my coworker's political stances are and I kind of like it that way.
- manfredo 7y agoIn my experience, the people who insist that there is no such thing as being apolitical are the ones most averse to political views different from their own. More often than not, people who insist that coworkers should bring politics into the office neglect to consider that many of their coworkers probably hold views they consider morally wrong or harmful. For instance, several co-workers who made such statements had also called all Trump supporters white supremacists (attributing the label to all supporters was explicit) and that apprehending any illegal migrants at the border is inherently racist. Something tell me these people have a pretty specific image in mind when they're encouraging their co-workers not to be apolitical in the workplace.
- megla_ 7y agoWhy are the people trying to drag politics into everything always leftist? You people can drag border detaining and childrens hormone therapy into a python web framework.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoWhen I was a college student and in my early twenties I was aware that my opinions on political stuff changed a lot. So I didn't worry about politics much, I had an opinion about right and wrong but didn't take it seriously. That is apolitical.
- bsanr2 7y agoTo be apolitical is to make the tacit political statement, "Things are okay enough for me to not care." It's very difficult to be truly apolitical in a nation where a birthright to political interest in whatever you deem fit has been vested in you since... well, birth. Assuming you're American.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoThat's a reason, but not the only one. Others include, but aren't limited to: - The world is too complicated for me to know who is correct - Both options on the table suck - My voice doesn't matter - I trust others do better than I would Not taking a stance between essentially two choices for how things should be done is not the same as saying things are being done okay.
- manfredo 7y ago> To be apolitical is to make the tacit political statement, "Things are okay enough for me to not care." But the point is, they don't care. Which makes this position apolitical, an absence of political opinion. The fact that they aren't spurred into political actions due to personal suffering does not mean that there's no such thing as being apolitical.
- bsanr2 7y agoIn this case, yeah, it does. To not care either way is to be okay with ceding your right to care to others. Which is... a choice. An opinion on the worthiness or usefulness of having that choice. The only way to be apolitical is to never have had a choice... And since duress makes having a true stance impossible, there's no way to be apolitical.
- inopinatus 7y agoGather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun A man whose allegiance Is ruled by expedience Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown "Nazi, Schmazi!" says Wernher von Braun Don't say that he's hypocritical Say rather that he's apolitical "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department" says Wernher von Braun Some have harsh words for this man of renown But some think our attitude Should be one of gratitude Like the widows and cripples in old London town Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun You too may be a big hero Once you've learned to count backwards to zero "In German, und Englisch, I know how to count down Und I'm learning Chinese" says Wernher von Braun -- Tom Lehrer, That Was The Year That Was, Reprise Records 1965.
- pdkl95 7y agoTom Lehrer performing "Wernher von Braun " live (1967): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro His amazing wit is just as biting today as it was when he originally composed most of his songs over half a century ago.
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- inopinatus 7y agoIndeed. But the echo chamber resents their apolitical being equated with amoral. Lest they develop ethics, and bite the hand of mass consumer surveillance that feeds them.
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- flukus 7y agoThen political is a meaningless word, the results are the same.
- throwaway8879 7y agoYou seem to be implying that being apolitical is a political position in itself, much like how atheism is a religion too. Do you consider baldness a hairstyle?
- d357r0y3r 7y agoThis is a more nuanced version of the "silence is violence" position. You're either an activist or you're part of the problem. You're either with us or against us. It's a position that makes total sense and seems unassailably true to...well, people that are tuned in politically. People that don't care or don't connect the dots between politics and their actual life are pretty dang apolitical.