But, simply, I can’t. If my partner annoys me much, I end up getting angry sooner or later. I explain why to him, in one of those emotional reactions he says I have.
I return to France at the end of 18th century and once more I see my country’s army --my country’s— arriving to the town where I was born with horses, rifles and cannons. I see how innocent people that only wants to thrive is squashed, massacred, by the armed forces that the government sent. I am a witness again, with complete incredulity, of how we are treated worse than an enemy. We are... I am, shot down, by my own compatriots. The same that deposed monarchy with their ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’.
I don’t understand politics, so I really can’t take a stand. I haven’t lived the Catalonian problem, I barely know something about constitutions and illegal referendums, I don’t know how much of they tell me in the television is true or false. I only know I have seen people bleeding because they wanted to express their opinion. And policemen charging against a peaceful crowd that wanted to vote, whether or not this vote was going to be valid. At least no one has been hanged for the time being. Let us hope no one will die, after all we are now more civilized than we were two hundred years ago, aren’t we? Or eighty years ago when the Spanish Civil War began. But my incredulity is the same I felt when I saw the French soldiers shooting unarmed women and children. No one has died yet, but it is as if they have done. Something died within me on October 1st, and something keeps dying when I see politics trying to justify that violence. Perhaps what dies is the hope of seeing that human beings have changed in something, that human beings learn from their mistakes, that what happened in La Vendeé won’t happen again, ever. But I am not going to generalize, not today. There are people who do change. There are people who are aware of things. The bad side is those people are not usually among politicians, with few exceptions. The good side is that today, in theory, politicians can’t make use of cannons against civil population, and people have more power than they think. Will they learn some day how to use it?
I used to tell everyone I was apolitical. But when you remember past lives and have felt yet again on your own flesh what wars caused by politicians do on people, you can't be apolitical. You can't remain neutral. The risk is always there, and no one is safe.