I am seeing again people advise aspiring artists of every stripe that you should refrain from all political topics lest you offend a potential fan and lose that sale.

Okay, I can see the logic of that. After all we all want our art to sell wide and far, not only does that help provide an income but also it means that the art itself is reaching a wide audience, but is that the single most important thing?

First off I think it is impossible to make art, particularly when you talk about anything with a narrative, that does not also profess, intentionally or not, a worldview and all worldviews are inherently political. Perhaps you never make a public statement about marriage equality or other matters interact with homosexuality, but having gay characters appear or not appear makes a statement, what you do with those characters makes a statement, how heroes and villains react to those characters makes a statement, and the totality of those statement is a political statement. This is true of issues like how the military is presented, how government officials are presented, and numerous other factors in world-building. Narratives are political, that cannot avoid it.

When someone complains about a narrative being ‘too political’ it is nearly always a complaint about a political philosophy that the protester disagrees with. I cannot recall a single instance of someone protesting as ‘too political’ a stance that they supported.

Another important factor is that when someone decides to perform some art they have not surrendered their rights, privileges, or duties as a citizen. In democracies we all have a responsibility to the political body, to participate, and that includes making arguments for what we think is right and against what we think is wrong. To do less is the surrender the duties of citizenship for a gain of coin.

Now with all that said you can be smart about your positions or you can be an ass. I tend to dismiss those who think that the height of debate is ‘trolling’ the opposition. Those who use mockery and insults in the place of reasoned arguments get no where with me save being put on the ignore list. There are political writers with whom I almost never agree and yet who I do read often. I am not reading them to score some sort of imaginary counting coup by dismissing their arguments, but rather to read their actual arguments. Sometimes people who disagree with can have very valid points and its better to understand where you might be going wrong than to continue on in smug ignorance.

So I will continue to make political observations, but I will always strive to base them on reasoned arguments and not on snark and mockery.