How to Understand Everything Political

Politicians of every sort want to create dependency upon the systems they represent, whether through force, advocacy or manipulation, and the primary tool of dependency is victimhood. Politicians thrive on victimhood, as they make all kinds of outlandish promises to “solve” your victimhood problems.

I define victimhood as ascribing the experiences in your life as at the control of someone else. While this may be absolutely true, especially momentarily, to continue to claim victimhood once agency is again available puts the control of your life in someone else’s hands. Once a person experiences agency, victimhood becomes uncomfortable.

This is why forgiveness is one of the most powerful human tools of growth. We forgive not because someone did us wrong and we are magnanimous; no. We forgive to relieve ourselves of the burden of giving someone else power over our lives, mostly long after they have moved on.

As a person moves out of victimhood, only through their own volition, one enters into survivorship. From survivorship, it is then possible to move into creatorship, a status of 100% responsibility for your response to all that occurs in your experience. In this phase of life, agency for all decisions and consequences lies within yourself. It does not relieve anyone of the responsibility of advocacy for beliefs, or humane responses to inhumane treatment, but instead enables that advocacy come from a place of power.

In order to move from victimhood, through survivorship and into creatorship, discernment of the truth is the most important tool. Politicians hate being held accountable, and truth makes them so. When considering world events as they are reported or described (facts as they are or emotionalized propaganda) there are two tools that parse every story into basic comprehensible elements. These tools are Occam’s Razor and Cui Bono.

Occam’s Razor simply posits the question: what is the simplest explanation that accounts for all of the facts? And Cui Bono inquires into who benefits. With these tools, even the weirdest and most convoluted events and stories reveal the underlying truth.

For example, the Russian army buildup on the Ukrainian border. What is the simplest explanation that fits the facts? Russia feels threatened. It is not too far a guess to assume that the US would feel threatened by Russian arms sales to Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Oh wait, that last one already played out once!

Who benefits! Hmm. The US is going to shut down Germany’s and Europe’s largest, cheapest source of gas- the Nordstream pipelines. And who will step in to sell LNG to Europe- at a “slightly” higher price? Why the good old US of A!

And who benefits from arms sales to the countries that border Russia? Hmm- well Finland, always good for a fence sit- is considering buying F35 fighter jets from- The USA! Hurrah for the war sales industry in the US! And many other countries, not wanting to be left out in the cold, will or are joining that gravy train for the US.

The war may or may not get prosecuted by Russia. But the facts and who benefits are easy to discern. As you look at what goes on, discard the rhetoric, jingoism and persiflage- there is no need to get offended by any particular action by any particular polity. You might just want to understand what the actual story is so as not to get over-exercised jumping to conclusions.

Of course, I am ignoring the weight of real emotions: raw human fear, courage and personal convictions. I acknowledge the importance of all of these factors- but- I am not swayed into ill-considered action on behalf of someone else’s agenda. Looking as dispassionately as possible with these tools reduces the outsized role of politics in your life.

Looking at both Russia and the US as equal partners in managing control of economic benefits for the leaders of those countries, and seeing the conflict in eastern Europe for what it is, empowers rational people make good decisions for their own well-being. Nothing is worse than giving a life for someone else’s profit.

I chose to write about what I believe to be extremely polarizing beliefs to test the waters in Medium. I like to write, I’ve lived a fairly intense life, I feel as though giving voice to experience might benefit some, but I have no feel for this as a communication channel or work I will take on. Let me know.

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