Have I become Jaded On the Subject Of Politics?

Am I jaded by politics? It’s a straight forward enough question. Yet it could be one which is quite difficult to answer.

Should this be put another way: is it too easy to become jaded by politics? This would be the kind of state in which you let politics get to you. The point where you take politics so personally that in the end the individual concerned just shuts down.

On the other hand, the idea of being jaded by politics, it could be argued, is now the default position which most people take up, while talking about the state of the country and the world.

Being jaded may even be the sort of thing which is automatically effected by cool people who normally believe they are bored with everything the world has to offer. They only normally effect this position due to the fact they believe politics has no relevance to them.

Then again, even if we believe that there is nothing to be jaded about by politics. A quick look at the general landscape of politics is, maybe, enough to turn us the colour of jade green stone.

The civil war in Syria rumbles on with no end in sight. Even if this civil war ends, which it probably will not do so in the foreseeable future, there will always be another civil war to heighten international tensions.

Vladimir Putin, who is a great supporter of the Syrian, Assad, regime, annexes the Crimea illegally. Russia becomes the old Russia once more. I can only wonder how long it will be before Putin rescinds habeas corpus, and the next set of democratic elections in the Russian Federation.

Meanwhile at home, the budget delivered by George Osborne last week never really seemed to rattle the cage of the electorate. Some allowances went up. The price of beer came down by a penny. Something’s were chucked at pensioners.

Only it was as if most of us did not exist. A classic case that most of us do not count in this world of targeted demographic policies. If the campaign computer, and the statistics, state that we do not belong to one or two important groups. Then we are forgotten about.

Even at the local level I take it that most people this week would have received their council tax bills, only to end up sighing. The rise may have only been two percent. Only it would seem that by abstaining the Tory grouping in the council are colluding with the Labour Party to rise our taxes.

So from this it could be argued, in the long term, that there is no viable opposition at the council. The City has been pushed to the point , where in every ward we are no longer represented by those we voted in. Therefore, if we are not represented, why should we have taxation?

It was an idea which worked for the Americans in the eighteenth century. Who’s to say it would never work here in Plymouth during the twenty first! It may well be a better option to be annexed by Vladimir Putin – or is that going a little too far!

No doubt, if you read this far it’s likely that your eyes are beginning to roll upwards in to your head. There’s enough here from the past week to make even the most hardened political watcher to become jaded over the subject at hand.

I know that most of us have probably better things to think about and do, rather than being overwhelmed by the shear weight that politics can represent. Sometimes it’s better to handle life on the personal level. In the end it’s our personal relationships which count more than international politics.

However, this does provide an answer to the second of my questions above: is it too easy to become jaded by politics? A point where we take politics to personally, and the individual concerned shuts down.

Maybe what we really need to do is stop taking politics as a personal affront all the time. There is nothing that as an individual we can do about certain aspects of politics. There is nothing, say, I can personally do about Putin’s entry in to the Crimea. In this sense then, I don’t really have to take it personally.

And if I don’t take it personally, then I do not have to become jaded over the fact that there was nothing for me in the budget, or that my council tax went up by two percent. Sometimes letting go is the best thing any of us can do.