I remember back in the early and mid 1970's when the moral majority was a big deal. At that time, this one and other religious authorities might pontificate and impose their views upon you and you would get routine visits from "Jehovah's Witnesses" knocking at your door and hoping to sell you their personal vision of the way things are, etc. You might also get accosted on the street and in shopping centers, by over-zealous religious people trying to tell you THE ONE WAY which THEY happen to know about, but which YOU are likely not to know, because you're committed the terrible crime of not having personally spoken to them before, which is your own horrible luck....

Well, I always ranked personal privacy far above the value that might get conveyed by the message of any religious authority, no matter what the religion or how highly rated the authority.
One has the right to be left in peace, and this ultimately out-ranks all other considerations, religious enlightenment included.

Nowadays, what used to be true for religion is the case for politics. While the need religiously convert others is significantly more muted than in the past, political issues have now taken the place as the arena. Those with political axes to grind cannot bear the fact that you haven't personally heard from them, even though you may be a perfect stranger. And they do not mind at all, invading your private space just as much as the religious authorities did, decades ago.

I was thinking I could follow my own interests out shopping today when a person with a clipboard confronted me and insisted I stop everything I was doing and stop whatever I was thinking about, and speak to them. I don't mind interacting with strangers while shopping - I happen to be tall and I often stop to offer my help to people trying to get things from high shelves.

However, this person who accosted me was not someone with a real in-the-moment -need, a need which only I could fulfil at that particular time and place. That person's only "need" was that I not remain ignorant of their personal spin on a political issue which they happen to care about.

What's worse, the person would not take no for an answer.

Even after I clearly and distinctly expressed my complete disinterest in talking politics with someone I didn't know from Adam, the person persisted and said I had to read what they had written in a local newspaper.

I think that the 1970's Jehovah's Witnesses could have taken lessons from this person I met today...

Is it just me, or have we taken politics as the new religion?

Is it just me, or is this a negative development?

Just my two cents.

Sincerely yours,

Doug Hemmick