Why Involve Yourself in Politics?

The video here is a joke, and the audience clearly gets the humor, yet this is a conversation that I had almost verbatim with my apolitical son very recently.

I was trying to inspire him to become more engaged, and I started with a strange tack, though it’s the truth.  I explained that, out of pure dumb luck, neither he nor I have too much to lose under the current repressive administration.  I began, “We’re not women, uneducated, sick, old, poor, gay, black, Muslim, Hispanic, pregnant, immigrants, active or reserve military, or blue-collar workers, nor are we actively being shot at by a deranged man who just picked up an AR-15 at Walmart. The planet will be in tatters soon, but we have the means to stay out of wildfires, floods, droughts, water shortages, blights, etc.  If we’re stopped by a cop, we’re extremely unlikely to have our heads blown off.

“We’re not in a business being decimated by trade wars, and we’re not in tourism, which is down sharply because half of the world’s countries hate our guts.  We’re not personally embarrassed because we can’t hear the other half laughing in our face.

“So if you’re going to get active, it won’t be because of what repression does to you personally, but because you’re a good enough human being to want to assuage the suffering of other people; I can only hope that I’ve done a sufficient job as your father to have brought that about.”