“I think the government made a mistake by not doing this.”
“Oh! You are anti-government?”
“No you dumbass!”
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed conversations turn to something like this more often than not in the recent times? Did our political system get to us so much that we cannot hold a single discussion without being categorized into either the left side of the political ideology or the right? Or did we as people, by being so short sighted, drive our ideologies more and more away from the center?
I wonder whatever happened to be able to support or criticize a government based on the issue at hand and the decision in question instead of blind support or criticism. I don’t remember holding a single conversation, forget discussion, with anyone in recent times which did not end up pitting me in either the left bucket or the right one.
The backbone of a successful democracy is a strong opposition which ensures that none of the two competing ideologies get away with anything and everything. However, without pointing fingers, in recent times, the two ideologies have been diverging away from the center faster than that iceberg drifting away from Antarctica. This has ended up fracturing our society worse than before. Or is it the other way round? I am not sure.
Across the world, democracy was meant to ensure that the ruling party, irrespective of the ideology, straddles the dividing line to ensure that policies pertaining to the welfare of the people don’t fall prey to the ideology. However, recently, people have been willing to give up their welfare to ensure that the ideology* does not fall prey to the dividing line.
This observation is very concerning to me. I believe that no matter what the cause or effect is here, the world as a whole is drifting apart and becoming polarized. Politics was never personal. However, notion that criticism of the government is equivalent to the criticism of the people or the nation is hurting us not just today but also generations to come. I believe that this is setting a path for the next generation to continue forward on the diverging lines.
Two wars and millions of lost lives later, I strongly believe that a path to a more polarized world, is a path to a destructive world. It is high time we introspect our politics and our ideologies to ensure that it doesn’t fracture our society or the other way round.
*Not pointing fingers at a specific ideology or a government. The observations and thoughts are general in nature and do not support either left or right ideologies.