There’s one positive changing my mindset that’s been absorbed thru prison culture. Although I’ve never been overtly political in adulthood, but I would get upset by politics. I was more vocal about my political stances as a teen, then went thru a change of heart after voting for the first time in the 2008 presidential election between Obama and McCain, in which I voted for 3rd-basically 4th- party candidate Chuck Baldwin (exactly…who?) Those two didn’t seem like a real choice, underneath it all, just a racial one. The electoral process has basically been reduced to picking your favorite color (red or blue??) to get fucked by, and all the powerful special interests, global corporations, and a dozen billionaires choose who even gets to run.
Many prisoners are may not as hostile to politics, but theyre equally apathetic, maybe more so because theyre generally barred from participating. Like my homeboy remarked on our morning spin on the powers-that-be: ”Theyre gonna do what theyre gonna do and I can’t stop that. I figure there’s a reason why they only tell us certain things, like were only allowed to see this but not that.”
And that’s basically my big revelation: politics are bullshit. They’re supposed to be that way–meant to be a distraction. The machine is designed to keep you angry at and blaming external things and people for the ways your life is shit, instead of doing some soul-searching, and work on yourself to improve your station.
They want you to feel defeated, like you’ve no control over anything.
Don’t let em.
Easy Trouble 