Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves

Host: The city was still awake — its streets glittering with the residue of neon lies and rain-soaked reflections. The parliament building, that solemn cathedral of bureaucracy, loomed at the far end of the avenue, its columns bathed in sterile white light, like a god pretending to be clean.

The clocktower struck midnight. The sound echoed — heavy, precise, like an announcement no one wanted to hear.

Across the square, beneath a flickering streetlamp, Jack and Jeeny sat on a bench, the kind that remembers more confessions than comfort. A discarded newspaper fluttered beside them, headlines screaming promises that had already died.

Jeeny: “Paul Valéry once said, ‘Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.’”

Host: Her voice broke the silence like a match in a cathedral — small, but blasphemous.

Jeeny: “It’s a cynical line… and yet, it feels like prophecy. Doesn’t it, Jack?”

Jack: (dryly) “Cynical? No. Accurate. Politics isn’t about serving the people — it’s about sedating them.”

Jeeny: “You make it sound like anesthesia.”

Jack: “That’s what it is. You keep them distracted — arguing about colors, slogans, faces — so they forget they have hands.”

Jeeny: “Hands?”

Jack: “Hands to build, to create, to change. The moment people remember their own agency, the system panics.”

Host: The rain began again — soft, insistent, cleansing nothing. It painted rivers on the pavement, flowing between Jack’s boots like liquid irony.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s true. But politics is necessary. Without it, we’d have chaos — voices shouting over one another with no structure, no order.”

Jack: “And with it, we have obedience disguised as order. Politics doesn’t solve chaos — it manages it. Keeps it profitable.”

Jeeny: “You think everything’s corruption.”

Jack: “Not everything — just everything with a title.”

Host: She looked at him then — really looked — his face pale under the lamp, his eyes reflecting the restless world around them. A man who’d read too much history and trusted too little humanity.

Jeeny: “Valéry wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t entirely right either. Politics isn’t just prevention — it’s translation. It turns chaos into words, words into laws. Without it, people’s passions would eat them alive.”

Jack: “Better to be devoured by passion than starved by apathy.”

Jeeny: “You’d prefer revolution to governance?”

Jack: “At least revolution remembers what it’s fighting for.”

Host: A car horn blared somewhere distant, its sound swallowed by the wet air. The streetlight above them buzzed, a dying insect in glass.

Jeeny: “So you think democracy’s a performance?”

Jack: “Of course. Every election is theater. Every candidate an actor auditioning for belief.”

Jeeny: “And the people?”

Jack: “The audience — clapping for lines they’ve already heard.”

Jeeny: “You sound tired, Jack.”

Jack: “I am. Tired of watching people vote for saviors instead of systems. Tired of seeing freedom reduced to a checkbox.”

Jeeny: “But isn’t that still choice?”

Jack: “Choice between illusions isn’t freedom, Jeeny. It’s marketing.”

Host: The rain slowed, becoming a mist — the kind that blurs edges, softening distinctions. It made the city lights shimmer like ghosts pretending to be stars.

Jeeny: “So what’s the alternative? A world without politics?”

Jack: “A world where people govern themselves. Where power isn’t centralized but shared — where communities manage their own needs instead of waiting for bureaucrats to remember them.”

Jeeny: “That sounds like utopia.”

Jack: “No. It sounds like responsibility — something politics was designed to distract us from.”

Host: A pigeon, damp and disheveled, landed near their feet, pecking at crumbs that weren’t there. It was absurd, symbolic — a citizen in miniature, searching for sustenance in systems that forgot to feed it.

Jeeny: “You talk like an anarchist.”

Jack: “No. I talk like a realist who’s stopped pretending the emperor’s wearing clothes.”

Jeeny: “You think cynicism is realism?”

Jack: “I think optimism has become propaganda.”

Host: The lamp above flickered again — each pulse of light cutting their faces into halves: belief and doubt, hope and resignation.

Jeeny: “Maybe you’ve lost faith in politics because you’ve lost faith in people.”

Jack: “Or maybe I’ve just started paying attention to what people do when given power.”

Jeeny: “You forget — some people use power to heal. Mandela. Gandhi. Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Jack: “And most use it to hide their reflection. Even your saints compromised.”

Jeeny: “Compromise isn’t corruption, Jack. It’s survival. It’s what keeps ideals from rotting into ideology.”

Jack: “No, Jeeny. Compromise is what turns revolutions into paperwork.”

Host: Her eyes flashed with frustration. The rain had stopped, but her cheeks glistened — from water or emotion, it was hard to tell.

Jeeny: “You know what’s worse than bad politics, Jack? No politics. When people stop believing in dialogue, they start believing in violence.”

Jack: “Maybe violence is what happens when dialogue stops meaning anything.”

Host: The silence that followed was thick — not of peace, but of tension so human it almost hummed. The city, with all its noise and lights, seemed to lean closer, listening.

Jeeny: “So what do you want? A return to tribalism?”

Jack: “No. A return to authenticity. Politics should serve life, not replace it. Valéry saw it clearly — governments distract us so we forget we’re meant to govern ourselves.”

Jeeny: “But maybe people need distraction. Maybe not everyone wants to hold the burden of self-rule.”

Jack: “And that’s how empires are born — from the laziness of the free.”

Host: The church bell in the distance chimed once. Time moved, indifferent. The air smelled faintly of wet stone and exhaust — civilization’s perfume.

Jeeny: “You know what your problem is, Jack? You think politics is the disease. But maybe it’s just the fever — the symptom of a world trying to heal itself.”

Jack: “Then we’ve been sick for millennia.”

Jeeny: “Maybe healing takes that long.”

Host: She stood, brushing the rain from her coat. The neon light from a nearby sign caught her face, bathing it in red — the color of conflict, but also conviction.

Jack: (quietly) “You still believe politics can be moral?”

Jeeny: “I believe it can be human. And that’s the only morality that lasts.”

Host: He looked up at her — the skeptic and the believer, framed by the dying light of civilization’s own contradictions.

Jack: “Then maybe the art of politics isn’t preventing people from acting — maybe it’s convincing them they’re already doing enough.”

Jeeny: “Then the art of humanity is remembering that we’re not.”

Host: The lamp finally went out, plunging them into soft darkness. The street, quiet now, shimmered with puddles reflecting what light remained — fragments of truth scattered across illusion.

They stood in that stillness — Jack, the realist who mistrusted hope, and Jeeny, the idealist who refused to surrender it.

Both right. Both wrong. Both necessary.

The city exhaled — a weary sigh that sounded almost human.

Host: Somewhere, beyond policy and power, beyond argument and apathy, the real work waited — the work of people remembering what was their own business all along:
to think, to feel, and to care.

And in that remembrance — quiet, inconvenient, divine — the night began to glow again.