Not caring about politics is the luxury of people where politics are done right. Where politics are done wrong, people can’t afford not to care about politics.
If the government is killing the people, people can’t afford not to care about politics. If there is a civil war, people can’t afford not to care about politics. If there is serious corruption in the government, the military or the police, people can’t afford not to care about politics either.
In England, the political class is called “the chattering class.” At least it’s not a genocidal class. They get despised; but they aren’t actually doing anything seriously wrong to the people.
Many other places are not so lucky.
When a man in Australia was talking about the “circus” in the government, I told him, “At least you don’t have Stalin.” Politics in the Western countries may be far from ideal, but they are done a lot better than in many other places. And sometimes it takes someone who’s lived in other places to put things into perspective.
A man in Australia once told me that the government wants you to prove it wrong. I told him that it’s something good about Australian government, as in many places if the government is proven wrong it shoots you. In Western democracies governments, as far as governments go, are quite good. There are other problems in these places. In particular, there are many non-government entities with power that do very wrong things. Men who like to rape their children and beat their wives. Dishonest religious sects. Corrupt, suffocating communities. Corrupt networks in law and medicine. Corporate crooks. And in limiting the scrutiny for tyranny and corruption to the government, the libertarian fails to address real tyranny and real corruption.
It is very easy in Western democracies to attack the government. It is a lot more challenging to confront these other organs of tyranny and corruption. This has not been lost on a lot of people in psychology, and they have tried to use government action to fight private corruption. Then the organs of private corruption have been claiming that they are victims of government tyranny, and that liberty means freeing them from government oversight. As the libertarian spends all his time fighting the government, real corruption sprouts up right under his nose and puts him in its service.
A government that is truly bad wouldn’t tolerate such people. They would get shot. That they are not, speaks a lot in favour of governments in Western democracies.
I want to see credit being given where credit is due. There is a lot that is right about governments in the West, and there are many private entities that are much worse than these governments.