Thomas Wictor

You may have purely noble intentions, getting so worked up over politics. However, there are two problems you face. The first is that you now have the responsibility to actually know what you’re talking about. The second is that as long as politicians are in charge of politics, you’re on a fool’s errand. Politicizing everything is stupid.

I shared a photo with my Dutch brother Eric, who’s currently taking part in a bicycle race in South Africa. On Marth 25, 2014, President Obama met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in Amsterdam. The president went overseas with a 900-person entourage and arrived in a caravan of armored limousines. Here’s how the Dutch prime minister showed up to the meeting.

Yup. Alone and on a bicycle. So I put the photo on Eric’s time line on Facebook, saying that I bow down to the Dutch. A Dutchman responded; his comment began like this.

He’s a globalist suckup all the same though (blaming Russia for a 97% pro-Russian referendum, calling for sanction, seriously?)

So when I try to give my brother—a fanatical bicyclist—a compliment, someone has to bring up politics. Not only that, the position stated is laughable. The population of Crimea is 36 percent Ukrainian and Tatar. Does anybody really think these people voted to join Russia? And the referendum itself had a tiny problem.

The referendum was clearly illegal under the Ukrainian Constitution, which states that the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an integral constituent part of Ukraine, can only resolve issues related to its authority within the provisions of the Constitution, and that only the Ukrainian Parliament has the right to call such referendums.

This was a vote in circumstances where Crimea is occupied by over 20,000 Russian troops, and indeed the meeting of the Crimean Parliament that announced the referendum was itself controlled by unidentified armed gunmen and took place behind locked doors.

This referendum in the Crimea took place at ten days’ notice, without the leaders of Ukraine being able to visit Crimea, without meeting any of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] standards for democratic elections. These include verification of the existence of an accurate and current voter registration list and confidence that only people holding Ukrainian passports were eligible to vote. The OSCE mission to Ukraine was refused entry to Crimea on 6th March, and there are reports of considerable irregularities including voting by Russia citizens, Crimean officials and militia taking mobile ballet boxes to the homes of residents, a blackout of Ukrainian television channels. The outcome of the referendum also does not reflect the views of minorities in Crimea, since the region’s Muslim Tatar minority, who make up 14-15% of the population, boycotted the referendum.

Furthermore, the ballot paper asked the people of Crimea to decide either to become part of the Russian Federation, or to revert to the highly ambiguous 1992 Constitution. There was no option on the ballot paper for those who support the status quo. The House should be in no doubt that this was a mockery of all democratic practice.

So in an attempt to express his political opinion when it was neither asked for nor relevant, the commenter showed his colossal ignorance of what’s actually happening. If you’re going to be political, you should at least have information on the topic you’ve politicized.

Here at home, people have assigned moral value to certain political positions. They actually fall in love with politicians who say the words that make them happy. Take California State Senator Leland Yee, a Democrat representing District 8.

Well, today Yee was arrested. Check out the first paragraph of this story.

A longtime California politician who was praised for his efforts to make government more transparent and authored gun control legislation was arrested Wednesday, accused of conspiracy to deal firearms and wire fraud.

That’s right. A politician who authored gun-control legislation has been arrested for conspiracy to deal firearms. Not only that, the 137-page indictment connects Yee to gangster Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.

Chow is accused of drug trafficking, gun running, money laundering, and murder.

Being a Californian, I can tell you that Leland Yee is one of the most outspoken, committed antigun politicians. He’s a hero to groups that advocate against gun violence.

In 2006, Yee was named to the Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll by the Brady Campaign for his efforts that included co-authoring a first-in-the-nation bill to require new semiautomatic handguns to be equipped with ballistics identification technology known as micro-stamping.

In 2013, he stood with law enforcement officials and then-Los Angeles Mayor Antonion Villaraigosa to propose a bill that would regulate assault weapons.

“While we cannot stop every senseless act of gun violence, the significant rise of mass shootings across the country demonstrates that we must take steps to close the loopholes that currently exist in California,” Yee said at the time in support of SB 47, which would have prohibited the use of a bullet button and other devices that allow for changeable magazines on all military-style assault weapons such as AR-15s. It stalled in committee last year.

Yee also authored SB 108, which would require all guns to be properly stored when not in the owner’s possession. That bill also stalled in committee last year.

And the same guy has now been arrested for offering to set up illegal arms deals. So many California state senators have been arrested recently that the Democrats have lost their supermajority in the legislature. Being unable to trust or believe politicians is what keeps me apolitical.

I don’t in any way endorse the sentiment of this song as applied to those who politicize everything.