Have the elections depoliticized us?
Okay, so there are surely lots of reasons why we haven’t been blogging lately (laziness, other work, drugs, etc.). Yet, is it also because we’ve been too busy following the elections and worshipping Obama to write on our blog about real politics? I say “real” politics, because of course we could write about the election contest itself, but that seems so manufactured, what with all the tens of millions of dollars the candidates spend on PR. I’m hypothesizing that we’ve been suckered into this world of manufactured politics. Personally, I think that what hooked me is all the numbers (the delegate counts, the polls, the campaign contributions, etc.), because my obsession with these numbers is just like how I used to follow sports stats everyday, but with an additional veneer of legitimacy attained from the supposedly “democratic” character of representative government. Well, I’ve had enough of this horseshit. As I’d say stop watching basketball and go outside to play it with your friends, so I’ll now say it with politics: reject the spectator sport version, and instead go out into your community, participate in direct democracy, and create a better world yourself (and do it now, not waiting a year for our holy savior Obama). BTW, I was inspired to write this post from reading James Herod’s Getting Free.

February 25th, 2008 20:36
I have to say I have been distracted lately. I did do some ground work for Obama here in California. But also life has sort of pulled me away from politics lately…sad but true, too busy trying to buy consumer goods…
February 28th, 2008 17:20
Well like Steve said it’s tough to balance your 9-5 responsibilities with things larger than yourself. But all the current euphoria is indeed useless if we don’t go out and participate ourselves.
I mean look at what this guy did with his life:
http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10757984
February 29th, 2008 10:29
Okay, I definitely exaggerated my claim in this post. While elections themselves and the media hype around them are depoliticizing, Obama’s campaign has been a force for inspiring participatory democracy, as evidenced by Steve and Nate’s groundwork in talking to folks about Obama. Check out this essay about Obama’s use of the phrase, “we are the one’s we’ve been waiting for” - it’s from the civil rights movement - it’s a call for citizens to become agents of change.