That actually isn’t weird at all. People treat “politics” as an epithet for “controversial politics”, but in reality, almost everything in society is political – relating to power structures, the distribution of status and resources, and how those factors are determined. What you’re getting at, of course, is that Republicans have shifted the Overton window so disgustingly far to the right that “everyone is welcome” in a classroom is treated as a controversial ideology.
We’re constantly conditioned to think of the status quo as apolitical in nature (it’s just “normal” and the people who want to change it for better or worse are “the politicals”), but it is and always has been, and it’s why we’ve needed so desperately these past several decades to remain politically engaged to protect what we want and to change what we don’t. Now? Who knows, but we still need to try.
Great comment. Taking it further, making “politics” inherently negative has a lot of propaganda value to power. The people in charge generally want to defend the status quo, so they’d rather depoliticize the populace. This is why you get such strange contradictions as the people in charge constantly attacking “political elites” or “the swamp” or whatever. They’re trying to discredit politics itself to consolidate their power. Similarly, when they do want to change something, they say “it’s not politics; it’s common sense.” They want a population that feels like politics is something inherently dubious, or at least just not worth their time and effort.
Inclusion has always been and will always be a political project, because there are people who want power and who will use it to exclude people for whatever reason.
That actually isn’t weird at all. People treat “politics” as an epithet for “controversial politics”, but in reality, almost everything in society is political – relating to power structures, the distribution of status and resources, and how those factors are determined. What you’re getting at, of course, is that Republicans have shifted the Overton window so disgustingly far to the right that “everyone is welcome” in a classroom is treated as a controversial ideology.
We’re constantly conditioned to think of the status quo as apolitical in nature (it’s just “normal” and the people who want to change it for better or worse are “the politicals”), but it is and always has been, and it’s why we’ve needed so desperately these past several decades to remain politically engaged to protect what we want and to change what we don’t. Now? Who knows, but we still need to try.
Great comment. Taking it further, making “politics” inherently negative has a lot of propaganda value to power. The people in charge generally want to defend the status quo, so they’d rather depoliticize the populace. This is why you get such strange contradictions as the people in charge constantly attacking “political elites” or “the swamp” or whatever. They’re trying to discredit politics itself to consolidate their power. Similarly, when they do want to change something, they say “it’s not politics; it’s common sense.” They want a population that feels like politics is something inherently dubious, or at least just not worth their time and effort.
Inclusion has always been and will always be a political project, because there are people who want power and who will use it to exclude people for whatever reason.