Saturday, October 29, 2016

Political Ostracism


I always thought I am apolitical, which is, anyway, said to be one way of being political. But I think I have lost my political naivety, illusion, and innocence. More and more people in my today’s world seem to suffer political ostracism. They seem to have become politically homeless. They now seem to live in a political orphanage, because they can neither feel at home (or identify themselves) with the self-righteous, radical, militant, hypocritical, intolerant, and often anti-Semitic, left ideologists, nor can they feel at home (or identify themselves) with extreme, nationalistic, chauvinistic, xenophobic, and racist right ideologists. Politics and media seem to have been hijacked by these two types of ideologists, who seem to be too radical and extreme to leave room for reason, truth, justice, moderation, nuanced positions, wisdom, and compassion. Politics and media tend to hide, twist, or deny truth and reality when they do not fit their ideologies and agendas. Worst of all, such political ideologies, particularly, the extreme leftist ideology seems to have infiltrated the world of academics. Some academics seem to have somehow got the idea that an academic is defined by the radicality of his or her radical leftist political ideology. A tragic irony is that even a hint of reasoned dissents would suffice to label a fellow academic as a Nazi, thereby seeking to ostracize  and delegitimize an alternative viewpoint by throwing accusations ad hominem.