Tomorrow is the election time in Europe and double election time in Bulgaria. We’ll vote for a national parliament on top of the EU one. Elections bring political discussions into daily life and expose the divisions we have. I’m unsure about the proper way to handle that. My country’s society is very divided on many topics.

• Shall we send weapons to help Ukraine
• Was Communism good or bad
• More roads or higher pensions
• Are immigrants good or bad
• Shall we adopt the Euro

And the list continues. Any random person I meet can hold extreme beliefs on any of the subjects, and learning about that, or exploring it, can lead to changing the perception of that person, or them changing their perception of me if I express extreme beliefs.

For example, a plumber comes home to fix something, fixes it, and drops that whatever random thing has been bad for 35 years, implicating it was good before that, and before that was communism. I immediately recognize this person is radically in the “Communism Good” camp, while I’m in the “Communism Bad” camp.

Over the years, I have slowly learned that the best strategy for me is to avoid the subject outside of the family. It may not sound right, but it is the best strategy I’ve found so far.

Today I posted a comment about politics on some random blog and feel like I swam in poop. I posted it in the Reader and didn’t realize it’s some conspiracy blog. It’s a good reminder to me to not engage in politics until I find a way to engage without feeling that way.

In any case, it’s the peak of politics talk for the year for us. Time to vote.