An essay by Jay Rosen: “Politics in a Different Key”. Are new net-enabled communications tools allowing new inroads to be made into Ye Olde Politickal Game? I sure hope so.
Parts of this essay made me think of Robert Redford’s THE CANDIDATE, a candidate for the Senate in California.
I keep wanting all of this net-idealism to pay off sometime. That would be groovy. Maybe I’m too starry-eyed, but I hope not.
I hope you’re not too starry-eyed, either. Personally, of course, I tend to dismiss everything out of hand. It always, at least lately in perhaps my most cynical mindframetime, comes down to my distrust of the general populace. I can’t get around it — who ARE these people that make up the majority? Why do THEY get all the good parking spaces? What twisted morality allows them to pass me on the shoulder during rush hour? Why can’t they be stopped from causing accidents by riding their motorcycles on the dotted lines between the cars on the freeway at 120mph?
Why does everyone suck, or, perhaps more betterly asked, why do I have the perception that everyone sucks? Why do I think I’m better than everyone else when all the evidence really doesn’t point that way at all?
I read that article and then I read the comments and my biggest nod of agreement came when seeing the college professor’s comment: we’re all preaching to the choir. It feels so palpable how this works. I don’t go spew this gibberish on the pages of the people who fundamentally disagree with my views; or if I DO do that I know it’s going to raise arguments that don’t resolve.
I can’t ever find the angle to convince the other thinkers that their views are wrong and mine are right. The ones who aren’t what I’m calling “thinkers,” that thronging mass that I look down upon from the vast heights of my milk crate, they get swayed back and forth not based on logic, but based on emotion and illogic. Just as I do when I don’t have the time to follow the ins and outs and who thinks whats. Which is most of the time, except about certain, tiny issues that mean nothing in the scope. As great as it would be if we could all be INFORMED voters, if we all took the time to be informed then none of us would have time for anything else. And what does that leave? Very few informed voters in touch mostly with other informed voters and not with what’s going on outside the realm, a few half-informed voters, a few half-informed non-voters too convinced of the righteousness of their one-vote-doesn’t-count stance to let anything convince them otherwise (hi), and a whole stack of uninformed voters who think Ahnold could probably kick some ass.
Yes, yes yes and again yes! I agree with all of that stuff. but… but… dammit!
How informed do you have to be to realize that the only people the Republicans are doing any favors for these days are moneybags and harum-scarum snake-monkeys? I mean, tax cut? I certainly haven’t seen it! So, mleh to those buggers.
Maybe it’s just that I have more faith in people in general. That basically, I don’t think, for the most part, that people are wilfully ignorant, but rather that they have enough on their plate just managing their own little life-worlds…
Also, I’ve seen this guy speak, and he’s got some serious mojo… and he’s not even a brilliant speaker. (I’m trying to be unstarred, here.) So, basically, I think that if I go talk to my neighbors and my friends and family and say: hey, this Howard Dean guy is pretty groovy, check him out: I think that THAT has a lot more weight than whatever some people might be seeing on the television, you know? Now imagine 500,000 people doing that… So, I’m basically thinking that maybe things aren’t as hopeless as they might seem…
But then again, maybe I’m a hopeless optimist, who reads too many damn books. If so, that makes me sad… because, hell, I’d settle for a ruling president and party that wasn’t so transparently incompetent and narrow-minded.