Can Yogis be politically active?

In The Yoga Sutras of Pantajali, Sri Swami Satchidananda discusses cultivating attitudes toward four different kinds of people. As a practicing yogi, your utmost importance is placed in achieving peace. This peace is ultimately achieved by uniting with the Divine with the recognition that this Divine is within us as it is also within each and everyone of us.

Now the four different kinds of people: the "happy", the "unhappy," the "virtuous," and the "wicked." Swami Satchidananda urges friendliness and compassion to these respectively. In my mind, the first two have to do with with feelings. One feels happy or one feels unhappy. On the other hand, the virtuous and the wicked, in my opinion, have to do with morality. Unlike the ephemeral feelings of happiness or unhappiness, the virtuosity and wickedness seem to go beyond spontaneous human emotions. They seem to speak of human disposition, seated more deeply within human psyche. One cannot be virtuous one moment and not virtuous the next. Likewise, one cannot be wicked on moment and not wicked the next. For these last two Swami Satchidananda urges delight and disregard respectively. Regarding "wickedness," he writes that maybe if we leave them alone, they will come out of their wickedness. "Don't try to advise such people," he writes, "because wicked people seldom take advice. If you try to advise them you will lose your peace."

Because in trying to convert these people into good people, I will lose my peace, and my peace is of UTMOST important above all else, I am not to try to give them any help in how to stop being wicked.  I understand Satchidananda to be saying this: if you find peace within yourself, and you radiate this peace, this peace will cause othersfollow your example and find their way to peace and, therefore, enlightenment. This is what it means to detach from the world, by detaching from the world, by this "involution," one sets a chain reaction of sorts. This is enlightenment. The more wickedness you see, the more inward you turn.

I have a problem with that. Since there will always be "wicked" people as these people are not to be advised, we also have to be willing to live with this fact. This seems to be extremely undemocratic and defeatist. Isn't democracy all about getting that majority to agree with you? How do you get someone to agree with you if you don't try to advise them?

I know lots of politically enegaged people. I know lots of yogis. I also know that lots of yogis supported Barack Obama in 2008, but it was also a taboo to publicly acknowledge such favoritism then. Since then Seane Corn publicly supported Occupy Wall Street movement, she now tours with Michael Franti, another outspoken yogi who seeks justice. The two were in Wilmington, NC, my hometown, recently to support the overturn of HB2, the anti-transgender bathroom bill. And this year, more than ever, more yogis are speaking up against Trump and on behalf of Hillary Clinton because, seriously, Donald Trump is the antithesis of everything yogic. But I digress.

Well, I guess Satchidananda is right. I am getting agitated and disturbed just by this mere thought. The question to ask yourself is, "what is more important? My own peace or the peace of others at the cost of my own?"