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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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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