Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once said that “you may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you”.
Actually he said ‘war’, not ‘politics’, but as the 18th century military theorist, Carl Von Clausewitz observed anyway, “war is politics by other means”
But the Trotsky line is a line I often use to many people who scoff at the idea of taking an interest in politics and proceed to then lecture on how it doesn’t affect them.
To those people I now say, check your toilet paper supply. Check your supermarket shelves.
The long arm of international politics now extends into your most intimate habits of personal hygiene.
Who would have thought
Unfortunately it has taken the untold damage and the trail of debris in the wake of the Coronavirus which hasn’t even played itself out yet, to ram home the truth of Trotsky’s observation.
It’s a tsunami that has washed up on our shores and combined with our now exposed entanglement, enmeshment and reliance on China of just about every aspect of our economic growth and development, not to mention cheap stuff, people who say that ‘politics doesn’t affect them’ are getting a lesson in realpolitik.
You may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you, whether you like it or not.