I’m not sure what’s left to say about politics, so here’s a picture of a cat

By David McElroy · September 24, 2013

Most of what I read about politics lately is blatantly dishonest or at least badly misleading. There’s been a trend toward this — especially among True Believers of every side — for a long time, but it’s getting worse. Most people like to read this dishonest or misleading material, and they eagerly spread the graphic “memes” demonizing those who disagree with them. They love for someone to make them angry.

As a result, I’m not entirely sure what I have left to say about politics right now.

I moved away from an exclusive focus on politics almost from the beginning here. I started out talking about politics because I had worked in the field for so long. I had some things to say that were different from what the mainstream was saying (and different in focus from what was being said by other libertarians or anarchists). But my heart quickly led me to talk more and more about what I considered “real life” and less and less about partisan politics.

Although the numbers I see for readers has held up rather nicely, I’m not sure that it’s worth the investment of time for the small impact it might have. I don’t want to waste my time writing what becomes the equivalent of room noise in a world where social media and blogs are filled with angry voices catering to the worst in human nature — with lies and disinformation in the service of partisan propaganda.

I’ve been struggling lately with what I want to say here. I’m disgusted enough by politics that I find less and less that I want to comment on. When I do, I sometimes feel as though I’m just going through the motions. Part of that is that there are fewer and fewer people who want to hear honest discussion. But another part is that the polarized and ugly political climate is leading to things that are not only nasty, but that I consider dangerous.

Here’s an example. Here are four posts from a “friend” on Facebook in Arizona Monday night. (I’m “bleeping” out the profanity that was spelled out.) Here’s what was posted:

OBAMA SUCKS LITTLE BITTY MUSLIM C****

i CAN PITCURE TH E NEW PRESIDENT OF iRAN sKULL F****** oBAMA IN SHORT ORDER

LETS TAKE A POOL [sic] HOW MANY C**** DO YOU THINK OBAMA HAS HAD IN HIS MOUTH OR A**

Please post like or shar if you agree……..OBAMA CAN SUCK MY JUNK……….

Not everyone has sunk to that level, but the partisan hatred is so bad today that many people are de-humanizing one another. They don’t just disagree with each other. They hate each other and see the other as less than fully human.

This example happens to be a very ugly (and extreme) example of a Republican taking a verbal shot at a Democratic president, but it works the other way, too. It takes a number of different forms (on both sides), but the common denominator is a de-humanizing of “the other.” There’s a serious degree of condescension and superiority. As I’ve said before, most people judge their own side by the best among them, but judge the “enemy” by the worst among them.

In an increasingly polarized environment — filled with hate and with people who honestly don’t care to understand those who disagree with them — I’m not sure what I have to say.

When I first started publishing this site nearly two and a half years ago, I quickly learned the sort of “red meat” that would get people sharing articles and sending my reader numbers up. On a good day, I might have thousands of readers. It’s still a pretty small audience, but pretty decent for an unknown political website.

But I learned something about myself along the way. I learned that I didn’t want to write that sort of material, even when I agreed with it. That bored me. I wanted to write about things that I thought were worth saying — things that might make people think about ideas they hadn’t thought about before, even if they ended up disagreeing with me.

Instead, I’ve noticed a different pattern. Many people share my stories on Facebook (and on Twitter to a lesser degree), but they only share things they already agreed with — and they’re being shared with people who already agree, too.

I’ve become increasingly disgusted by the pattern of what passes for online discussion. It’s not a matter of honest people trying to understand each other and trying to come to conclusions that everyone can live with. It’s mostly a matter of people who are certain they’re right trying to bludgeon others with their superiority.

Where do I fit in an environment where that’s the most common pattern? Am I introducing anyone to a different way of thinking? Am I sparking conversations among people who are honestly curious about new ideas? Or am I just providing the occasional lightning rod for people to argue about, interspersed with less-popular things that I find far more important, but which most people don’t care about?

I’m honestly not sure what I have to say at this point. I know I don’t want to be part of the mean and ugly system that simply makes people angry, but I’m not sure what there is beyond that. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, but I still don’t have an answer.

I’m more interested in the things that matter to me. I’m interested in creating art, exploring love and experiencing the beauty and wonder that this life has to offer. Those things don’t have much to say to politics. They also don’t attract the kinds of audiences that the political nastiness attracts. I’m honestly not sure what place I have in this new media world.

So for now, I’ll just let you know how disappointed I am with the world of partisan politics and I’ll tell you that I’m much more interested in real life.

That’s Charlotte at the top of the article, by the way. She’s part of my real life. And I have to say that I like her — and her feline siblings here in my home — far more than I like most of the people who I have to share this planet with.

What does this mean about what I have left to say? I’m honestly not sure. I’m still thinking about that.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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