Politics vs. What is Important

Posted on February 22, 2004 in Attitudes Blogging Citizenship IRC/Chat

Yule has a good point: there’s way too much political blogging. Someone throws a tomato and everyone else becomes the juice seeping into the carpet or the pressed white shirt. All those tomatoes serve the same purpose: look over here, away from your life.

I must confess that I have a time getting away from politics. I confess to slumming in the Undernet #political and #political_forum chat room where dozens of people like myself who claim to hate American politics as usual cluster to rant and rave. Everyone talks Fear: the Bushites tell me that terrorists prowl the streets, armed with nuclear-tipped balsa-wood gliders; the Kerry-outs tell me that four more years of Bush will destroy the nation and offer no plan for reversing the situation. Tonight, I argued with Democrats who told me that I was a fool for voting my conscience. The Fear Mongers of both parties love that word, fool along with idiot, imbecile, moron, oaf, and loser. This is their language of Love: “come to us and we will release you from the bondage of our ad hominems. We will celebrate you as a member of something. You are alone.“

Trading insults with them leads to nothing. If I rise above them and ask “OK, what is your plan?” they have none except 1.) saving us from terrorists and/or 2.) saving us from George W. Bush.

Does arguing with them further anything or just keep me from writing, reading, and thinking?

The rise of John Kerry affirms Yule’s pessimism: Whatever you choose to do, whatever act you undertake in the name of change “The octopus gets there ahead of you.”

Where is the hope? Where is the bad guy drowning in the grain getting packed on a boat and sent to starving India as at the end of this grand novel? Where is the reform? Norris’s octopus had steel tentacles: today’s octopus travels by radio waves and fiber optic lines. And it hates poetry for purposes other than partisanship.

To save my own mind, I have decided to avoid politics on the blog and IRC except on Tuesdays and Fridays. I will take walks when the weather is good or read books on rainy days. I need to recover me before I fight. I am going to examine my life. Otherwise, as Emerson said, it’s not worth living.

I am my own best hope in these times when things fall apart, voters gyre about anybody, and the center in Washington is an armed camp.