Like, honestly honestly, or jokingly honestly? What if I say "I wish I were allowed to speak about politics at work" at work? That's political. Do I get a fine? How about "am I allowed to talk about this?" If it's a gray area and we start debating it, which one of us gets shipped to the gulag?
Who gets to decide what's politics? Isn't even that question political?
And here comes the view of someone that is interested in politics and is reminded daily of how politics makes everyone's lives worse than necessary:
I wish my coworkers (and my fellow citizens for that matter) would be interested in politics just a little more, so they would realize what is happening around them, and know what they are talking about whenever they touch politics and legislature. My opinion is gradually becoming a minority view all over Europe, with people fleeing to either extreme.
The thing is: We were once "politically uneducated" here in Europe. It made the "third Reich" as a mass phenomenon possible, because a lot of people joined this movement blindly and with enthusiasm and did not realize where this train was heading until it was way too late (and they were completely delusional).
When the allies took over they tried to make sure we would be and stay politically educated, so this would never happen again (spoiler: it did not work). How ironic that America is spearheading the movement to normalize extreme views.
I think everyone should be interested in politics, but that doesn't mean I want to talk politics every day for an hour during my lunch with coworkers. There's more happening in the world than politics. I think that's what the parent is getting at. That also doesn't mean I think there should be a law against it.
Right, but do you want to use threat of punishment to enforce your personal desires? Do you want to live in a society where that's a thing that people can do? If society were headed that way, wouldn't even you want to talk about it? I doubt you'd want to live in the kind of society you want to build.
Assuming you think coercion is a bad idea, your only tool left is discussion and consensus-building about rules. In other words, politics.
(To be fair, I understand the underlying sentiment: I, too, would like to live in a world where my personal desires were somehow the law of the land in such a way that everybody else were also happy with them. But after some long thought (and some good literature) I think that really falls in the "be careful what you wish for" category.)
The "thing" referred to here was enforcing "your personal desires." In a functioning democracy, it's never one individual's personal desires that are enforced. The question of whether various democracies are functioning is an interesting one but not my intention to discuss here.
The worst part is that it’s typically navel-gazing about national politics. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with my coworkers’ views a lot, but good god, does anyone know what the state legislature is doing? How about the governor? Which of our coworkers could name their state rep? Probably very few. Meanwhile, we have a primary coming up in six months and our district has two lackluster candidates, but nobody’s concerned about that (we’re losing our awesome incumbent who’s running for state senate).
Like, honestly honestly, or jokingly honestly? What if I say "I wish I were allowed to speak about politics at work" at work? That's political. Do I get a fine? How about "am I allowed to talk about this?" If it's a gray area and we start debating it, which one of us gets shipped to the gulag?
Who gets to decide what's politics? Isn't even that question political?