Daily Inspiration Quote by Oliver St. John

Politics as anesthesia is a brutal image from a statesman, because it implies governance isn’t a forum for agency but a chemical administered to keep a public pliable. Oliver St. John’s tweak - “or rather the hashish” - sharpens the insult. Chloroform is clinical, swift, imposed; hashish is slower, hazier, and, crucially, participated in. The revision shifts blame from rulers alone to a wider culture of escapism: not just being knocked out, but choosing the fog.

The line lands in an Irish context where “politics” can mean spectacle without power, quarrel without leverage - especially under colonial administration and the long habit of managing dissent through ritualized parliamentary drama, patronage, and faction. It’s a jab at how political talk can substitute for political change: endless debate, electioneering, and identity-performance that feels like action while leaving the underlying conditions intact. The narcotic metaphor frames politics as mood-management, a way to dull pain, channel anger, and convert structural grievance into something tolerable, even intoxicating.

Subtextually, St. John is policing what counts as serious politics. He’s warning that a people can be governed by their own distractions as effectively as by coercion - that the empire (or the local machine) doesn’t always need force if it can provide a steady supply of diversion. The wit is doing work: the throwaway correction makes the charge stick, because it suggests he’s refining a diagnosis, not merely insulting a nation.