Too many voices with little to say: Politics matters less and less to me

By David McElroy · July 27, 2012

There was a time when I wanted to change the world through politics. I grew up believing that a great, moral people elected wise leaders, who then made decisions in our best interests. If I could just become one of those leaders, I could change so much and help so many.

But I finally grew up and quit believing in fairy tales.

I’m having more and more and more trouble lately being interested in politics, even enough to write about the subject. If you’re not a partisan of the two major “teams” — and you have no illusion that enough people are going to adopt your ideas to put them into practice — it’s pretty boring to watch the political spectacle. Have you ever tried to separate yourself from the shouting participants in the political process and just observed the way they interact with each other? It’s sickening.

If you’re a part of one side or the other, you imagine that the people on your side are the kinder and more intelligent and more well-meaning. You notice the positive examples of people on your side, but you don’t notice the many angry, hateful people on your own team. On the other side, you see screaming idiots who hate you and don’t have a good bone in their bodies. When you’re caught up in that trap, you have no idea how much the two sides are mirror images of one another.

This world isn’t going to be changed through politics. I’ve made that argument many times here. You either agree with me or you don’t. But for those of us who’ve decided that politics can’t change anything, the question is why we continue to pay even as much attention to the entire slimy mess as we do.

Some people will tell us that if we don’t pay attention to politics, we’re going to be controlled by it. Frankly, you’re going to be controlled by it anyway, so you don’t have any choice in that matter. The honest person who doesn’t believe in the process will either look for a way out or simply ignore the whole thing and concentrate on the things that matter.

And that’s the really interesting question. What are the things that matter? It’s certainly not the shouting idiots on television. It’s certainly not the smooth-talking politicians. So what does matter?

For me, it’s big things and little things. It’s the excitement of joy at experiencing God sometimes. It’s one of my purring cats climbing into my lap and going to sleep. It’s the joy of reading beautifully written words. It’s the voice of a certain woman. It’s the realization of the arrival of email from someone I want to hear from. It’s the hope of maybe becoming the man I was made to be.

It’s listening to people tell me their stories and finding out the things that matter to them. It’s times when I suddenly figure out some truth that’s eluded me. It’s the joy of some piece of art that suddenly means something to me. It’s the times when I can help someone, sometimes just in very small ways. It’s the moments of satisfaction I can have every now and then to feel that someone loves me.

It’s all of those things and a million more things. They’re the things that make life worth living. The further I get from politics, the more I experience these things. The more I have my eyes on the things that matter, the happier I am. The more I have my eyes on politics, the more disgusted and angry and alienated I am.

Lately, I’m more and more interested just in paying attention to the culture around me and to the values and psychology of people. I don’t necessarily like most people most of the time, but maybe I can love them and make the world a better place in small ways even if I don’t especially like them.

You can’t make a difference in the world through politics. You can make a difference in the lives of individuals, even if the society as a whole is too sick to repair. Maybe it’s the best we can do.

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I haven’t posted anything new in my YouTube series about narcissism in the last couple of weeks, so some people have been asking about it. There’s nothing wrong and I’ll be back soon. The issue is simply a technical problem because of a piece of equipment that died. Here’s a brief video I posted on YouTube to explain.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

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