Politics is cruel?

I wrote blogs occasionally but more often I read posts of other bloggers as well. One of the bloggers recently said politics is cruel because this generation of youth in Hong Kong is going to be deleted meaning they will not be given opportunity in career because employers are worry on their political stance. This whole generation of youth will end up to be victims resulting from the recent political social events no matter the ones who have really engaged or just onlookers. Employers will just play safe to avoid hiring youth in this age group. The recent social events are no doubt political and it is the whole generation of youth who is going to pay the price. This is why the blogger said politics is cruel.

His reasoning might be controversial but his view is out of question. In fact my opinion is that politics is not just cruel but even unforgiving. To explore the topic, a better understanding on what politics is perhaps can help. Wikipedia puts it as the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources. The Oxford Dictionary says it is the activities involved in getting and using power in public life, and being able to influence decisions that affect a country or a society. I am not knowledgeable enough to argue on these definitions but personally I think they are just too textbook type of things though. A street smart view is that whenever there are three persons or more then there is politics. My own interpretation is very straight forward that politics is the way of parceling out interests among powers within an assembly of people. No academic jargon.

In fact politics ranges from small scale between couples to social circle and office politics, as well as large scale in societal, national and global so perhaps it did not happen only when Robinson was stranded in an island of nowhere. Unlike the politics between couples that it is more about the dominance of the family issues and/or sexual life but rather than financial, the one I talk about is on the societal or national, if not in global level. Politics at such level is about large scale, enormous interests. Very often it is also not only about the benefit of one or a few but a bunch of people/nations who form a beneficiary group. When the interests is large enough then it naturally attracts different groups who are also in pursuit of it thus fierce competition is inevitable. Politics at this level is all about conspiracies, deception, coercion, lure, alliance, alienation ... all sorts of dirty tricks to defeat, if not eliminate, the rivals as the ultimate goal. Therefore it is just too gentle to describe politics is cruel but in fact it is unforgiving and about life or death without any mercy. 

Politics is unforgiving in nature due to the underlying fundamental that it is about parceling out interests among powers while greed is the most deep seated nature of human being. Despite of thousands of years of civilization, mankind is still under the control of the greed on the pursuit of power, wealth and fame. Politics is the way to consolidate self's power and undermining that of the rival, while power is the means to acquire wealth and wealthy people want their names marked in the history. Nevertheless wealth is the center piece of the whole pursuit. Without the prize of wealth, power is tasteless. Any comrade in our dear communist party knows about this and that is why all anti-corruption movements either ended up in failures or just turned out to be the tool of the internal power struggle which in turn became the politics in combating for the say to allocate the control of the state-run enterprises thus the source of the enormous interests considering the huge revenue of these Enterprises.

Politics among nations, especially between the alpha and its challenger, is also ferocious. The combat between the U.S. and China is a good example that no more elaboration is needed. All things like trade war, Huawei 5G equipment spying conspiracy, ban on the export of the U.S. technologies to China, allegation on the pandemic, Hong Kong policy act, argument on the HK version national security law etc are just excuses. The U.S. "suddenly" woke up and realized that if they do not eradicate the CCP regime from the earth, their existing dominance over the global affairs thus its privilege on parceling out the global interests will soon be lost. An all-round attack was thus launched since two years ago. Naturally being committed as a challenger, the CCP was aware of the story board in day one when she had the intent to take down her uncle Sam. China bought time by engaging with the U.S. on rounds after rounds of negotiation in the past two years, today she is well prepared for the counter-fighting. China is now up and ready for a full contact combat with the U.S. for global dominance. This is true politics in play and the battle is about the life and death of being a world leader thus the say on the global interests. A "good show" is coming soon.

Politics is always about survival. Winner takes most, if not all. The prize is so big so mercy is never an option. For people who decide to take part into it, this is something they must be aware of in the first place. There was a joke happened on the HKSAR ex-chief executive, Donald Tsang, who once claimed his occupation is politician. Apparently he does not know the underlying nature of politics so mistakenly thought a government administrator is politician. However, he ended up to be imprisoned as a victim of the political game beyond his terrain.