Why Politics?

I was posed a question I'd never really thought about before, "Why politics? What's interesting about it?" I didn't know exactly what to say in the moment, but now I do... so, why politics?

Politics is a revealing look at the human experience. I just started a college class on American government and politics, and one of the political philosophies we are learning about is the free-rider problem. It articulates a very human tendency: if you get the benefits of something without having to do anything, why would you contribute? For example, if I have a gas car but everyone else has an electric car, and thus the air is cleaner, I don't have to spend my own money on a more expensive electric car, but I still get to breathe cleaner air. Of course, if everyone thinks this way, everyone loses, because the air isn't clean. It's completely normal for us as human beings to prioritize ourselves over other people, but we can't have everything that way. Politics forces us to confront our human tendencies, which of them should be resisted.

Politics shows what we have absorbed without even realizing it. I remember when I was young, my mom, my sister, and I would play this game while we walked our dog, where my mom would name a career, for example, "mailman," and we would say what image came into our mind when she said that. In this case, we said "black man," which revealed our internal bias. It was revealing because we would never have thought about it before; if not for this game, I may never have confronted my internal bias. And yes, I know this is a very interesting thing to do with your kids, but we loved it. We would beg to play this game because it was so interesting; how we had all these things in our brains that we didn't even realize. As I grew up, I realized how this internal prejudice is built into laws and policies that disadvantage people of color. It reveals to us who we subconsciously believe deserves dignity, deserves to be saved, deserves to live. From mentally ill patients not receiving organs because "what if they ruin this one too?" to homeless people cast as drug addicts who "can't be saved at this point."

Politics similarly reveals who gets to control the narrative. Who do you get your news from? What background does that reporter come from? What internal bias do they have? Do you read any books written by people of color? What about music? Movies? Podcasts? It reminds me of this quote that says "until the lions have their own storytellers, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." (attributed to Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe). From lost cause mythology (white southerns romanticizing the confederacy) to Holocaust deniers (don't think I need to explain this), white people (at the time jews were not considered white) have always had the power to change the narrative. We can see it in the past, in the present, and in the way news is presented.

To sum it up, I love politics because it points out the flaws in humanity, society, myself, and politicians; there's always more to analyze, perspectives to hear, subgenres to dig into, and deep questions to ponder. It reveals that I can always work to better myself, my community, my country, and society as a whole.