It's only politics...

Technorati tags: Perception, Politics, Personality Conflict, Animosity

A rhetorical question to start your noggin tickin' - have we allowed partisan politics to shape how we see the world around us a tad too much?

Walski, for some unfathomable reason that even he can't explain, decided to pay a visit to a friend's blog yesterday morning. It's a visit that's way overdue. The blog in question is Can You See It? and the blogger in question is Tony Yew aka Alliedmartster. Both Tony and Walski are/were part of All Blogs - which has now all but disappeared. But this is not about All Blogs, but about what Alliedmartster wrote in his post from the middle of last week.

Have you changed? I read in one of the comments on a posting in Haris's blog, and it went as far as to mention the 'Bangsa Malaysia forum' which was held in bloghouse last year. It went on to name the panelist in the forum, but stop short of naming Rocky. Perhaps, the mention of Rocky's name would have convulsed the commentor (perhaps) or worst still, he would have turned himself to a frog.
(source: Can You See It?)

The "Rocky" referred to is, of course, Ahirudin "Rocky" Atan, alpha-blogger (9 million plus hits.. damn!). Rocky has, of course, his own political viewpoints, some of which Walski does not personally agree with. And naturally, because of this, Walski also doesn't agree with what he writes sometimes.

But does that mean Walski doesn't like Rocky - the person - anymore? No, it doesn't. And no, it shouldn't mean that. And Rocky, as an individual, maintains the right to think and write/talk the way he believes, based on his own convictions. Does that alone make Rocky a "bad person"?

Walski personally doesn't think so. Politics and political beliefs alone do not make a person what he or she is. And that notion is something that we, Anak Bangsa Malaysia, have yet to fully grasp. 
(when politics get personal, and more, in the full post)

There is this tendency to shape the image of a person based on what their political views are alone. Walski sees this in abundance all around the bloggerhood. Perhaps this is a side-effect of our political system being race-based. So, if someone were anti-UMNO, that alone makes a person anti-Malay. At least, that's the general perception that we see, particularly from the pro-UMNO blogs and websites.

And because religion has been heavily politicized, any religious opinions typically face similar broad-brush treatments as well.

Some years back, Walski recalls that the UMNO-PAS political rivalry got so bad, families were literally torn apart, ending up not being on speaking terms... Which Walski thinks was really silly. It's a special case, however, where both politics and religion got into the volatile cocktail mix. And when both elements are present, the emotional knickers get knotted up real easily, with rather unpleasant results.

For the record, Walski is not a member of any political party. He may have opinions that may lean a certain way, but those opinions alone are not enough to form a realistic picture of who or what Walski really is like as a person. Those who know Walski personally can probably attest to that. Walski is a lot more complex than meets the eye - or blog posting.

And he recognizes the fact that most people are that way, too - more complex than what their facade typically reveals.

The lesson, in a nutshell, is quite simple: on a personal basis, we need to learn how to agree to disagree...

To put it more bluntly: it's only politics, stupid!

Walski's chicken cartoon exploratory footnote: Walski wonders if you got the connection between the cartoon, and what's written in this post... Leave him a comment, if you think you know. The cartoon used is of course the hilarious Savage Chickens, Walski's favorite cartoon after Dilbert... amazing how so much can be conveyed on a single piece of Post-It^® note paper, eh?