wherein i discuss what “apolitical” means and make a lot of broad, vague and offensive statements
*editor’s/author’s note: tl;dr
I’ve never been tremendously interested in football, a statement that brings essentially no new information to the table. My last boyfriend is the CEO of a fairly successful sports analytics company – football built our house and put food on our table and dominated conversations and most of his free brain-time and also most of my frustrations. As a response to the end of the relationship, I recently reblogged a piece from Vice Magazine that broke no new ground eschewing the vulgarity of the whole thing; the display, the crass commercialism and how it had become a parody of the United States of WalDonalds, blah blah etc. etc. It was thrilling for me to read; like weird pornography in a time before the Internet or sexy revolutionary literature. I had become so exhausted by Football Nation and the agony of Sundays and Mondays that just being able to read someone else say it (and much more articulately than I could) felt wild and exciting.
The problem is, I can’t get behind that hate 100%. All my bestest, shining friends are football fans (although most keep it on the DL). Some of my favorite Sundays spent with Josh on 45th Street were with the windows open and the sun shining in that peculiarly clear way that it does in the fall while we yelled at the television and laughed and were so happy when we were each mired by personal sadness and frustration. Some of my earliest dates with that boyfriend were spent in bars, being rowdy and cheering with friends; smiling and commiserating when things didn’t go our way. Three hours later, when it was over, it didn’t matter. We were all friends again and we all said our goodbyes and went our separate ways but would be back next week. And while it was on, it was lively and fun to be a part of something. Football is pretty lame and a big cartoon of horror when it comes to dominate your life, but it’s never been a terrible way to get a few hours outside my head.
I was on a date where I was asked, point blank, if I was a Republican (I had been exercising my best polite silence when I think I was supposed to be signaling an allegiance). I haven’t been asked that in years, and it took me by surprise to the point I got helplessly tongue tied. No, I stammered (as I always stammer fairly inarticulately essentially 100% of my life on earth). “I am strongly apolitical, incapable of choosing a lesser of two evils.” This is the answer that I’ve hammered out over the years as a catch-all. Most people can at least kinda relate as we’ve become weary of the Coca Cola media hurricane nation and 24 hour political news cycle. And to be fair, on most dates I’ve been on it’s been to my benefit to come across pretty neutral and dumb. But this time, maybe for the first time? it didn’t seem to sit well and I was left with a pit in my stomach like I had picked the wrongest of wrong answers.
That’s the fundamental problem with politics (and where it diverges from the good natured fighting that took place in my living room)(and also my inability to articulate what’s happening in my head), it’s divisive in a way that it has no right to be. People brand one another, dismiss human beings because they have happened to pick a different team and sit on different sidelines. I see it happen over and over again amongst friends and colleagues. I’ve sought not to be branded but realized that’s not the case with these words. They’re unsatisfying and they’re not even truthful.
But of course my long answer, had I stammered it out, is far more uncomfortable. No, I couldn’t possibly pick one side over another because I don’t believe one man has dominion over another. I don’t believe governments are “legal”; that’s it, end of story. I’m not a Libertarian and I’m not an Ayn Rand fan (as I am no longer a junior in high school or think that I need a shitty allegory to explain how markets or morality work). It’s just in my heart of hearts. Although it’s a lovely idea to have some big representative body that hands out goods and services to the needy, the horror and abuse of power that goes along with it simply has not proven worth it to me. And in that heart of hearts, I believe in the morality of human beings and their capacity to function and organize without one. I am so heartbroken and moved to misery and tears when I read and see the tyranny and exploitation that is playing out here at home, engendered by both parties and amongst theoretically civilized people in a theoretically free state, I couldn’t possibly be moved to chose otherwise.
Uhhhhhhhh
You can see why this answer doesn’t fly. It’s on Mars. It’s fucking insane. It’s not possible (sorry Seasteaders) and it’s not productive and while I’m always happy to elaborate very few people want me to actually do it so much as they want to yell at me and make me feel bad because I hate poor people? (apparently?) So I’ve given up and acknowledge that I bring essentially a) no new information to any discussion and that b) I’m not really that interested in participating anyway. I’m ok watching football sometimes and I’m also ok with this. But more than superficially, it just rattles me too much and makes me too upset. I’m going to take out my broad strokes brush and paint a quick picture.
It’s been heartbreaking to watch my parents age and turn from reasonable, rational people who instilled in me a scientific sense of inquiry to Tea Party afficionados. I’ve had this conversation with other people whose parents are similarly taken and they’re just as rattled; this whole song and dance has become very personal for me. Because at the heart of it all, political theater is akin to football for readers; but far more dangerous because people refuse to realize what it does to them. When you align yourself with a team, and when you take up matters of “national importance” that you as one man couldn’t possibly effect and where the benefits are small and the costs are spread over a large population, you dump your energy and your effort into a worthless, hopeless cause. By choosing to follow political theater you end up neglecting the issues that face your community, you neglect being able to possibly effect change in your immediate neighborhood where you CAN but it requires you to get off your couch.
Politics keeps people dumb and uninformed the same way every other big corporation aims to keep us fat and docile; mathematically calculating how many bites of our Chicken Crispers will keep us coming back for more (I think the number is 8, and I also think they’re delicious) and how much outrage we want to feel before we’ll capriciously switch sides.
I can’t blame people for wanting to get involved, or feel like their opinions matter, or feel like they can take up causes that important. We are all striving to be bigger than we are, and we are all striving to be good and want more for our children and assign values and order to such an intensely chaotic experience. Labeling people Democrats or Republicans or whatever strips them of their humanity. There is a whole school of scholarly research dedicated to how mathematical and predictable political decisions are and how they’re made and how politicians seek to exploit their electorate—just points on graph, just variables in algorithm as predictable as the traffic on K Street.
Every voting cycle I’m excoriated because I have the nerve to say that voting is a waste of time by the same people who rattle off “hot button” issues regurgitated by talking heads or full color glossy magazines. I’m deeply, deeply concerned and involved in a handful of topics that I feel passionately about. I volunteer and give my time and money and more than anything I speak about them whenever I have the opportunity (I deleted a number of paragraphs that went into specifics; I also happen to live in fear of my job figuring out how Internet works and what I’ve been saying on it). I know that my effort and my time isn’t wasted and for anyone to try to tell me that voting one day every four years makes up for their ignorance of the abuses that take place on their block, to their homes and their bodies the other 1458 days a year can go fuck themselves. I feel ok and I feel involved and although politically I may hold views that are on another planet, I don’t feel inferior because I don’t keep up with the day to day minutiae of which team traded which disgusting, amoral freeloading asshole in a suit for another. I refuse.
This whole thing isn’t meant to be cynical. I think it’s the opposite – I have so much HOPE. And this view of “giving up” politics allows time for so much CHANGE. It allows for so much love, and so much room for people to be truly outraged and to allow their voices to be heard and to live together as neighbors and friends and shape their communities. It allows for charity and fundamental equality and liberty. I am not the horrible, critical dumb cynic that “hopelessly appolitical” seems to paint. I just hate seeing wasted energy and wasted time. I hate watching people’s eyes glaze over discussing judicial abuses but light up when making fun of Michelle Bachman. It makes me so sad in my heart place.
BAM. Done.
