We are political geeks. Yes. We are.

[sibelian]

All of us. We have to fess up.

The left is obsessive over points of order in a way that the right isn't. We don't like being told what to think, we like to think that we are establishing consensus on the truth, particularly over great big nebulous fields of cloudy human interpersonal stuff that very often isn't ever going to be amenable to "the truth".

The right aren't bothered about The Truth. Not the way we are. It isn't the axis around which their consciousnesses bend. They want RIGHT and WRONG and those are closely related to the truth, but subtly different and it's very EASY to say that things are RIGHT or WRONG just by standing up in front of a microphone, looking roughly like the people you want to think that you are RIGHT and CLAIM that you are, LOUDLY. It's not at all the same thing as establishing The Truth... which is not a process particularly amenable to standing up in front of microphones.

That's why it's easy for the manipulative freaks in the right wing to snap their fingers and get entire communities to go and vote for them, they know all the creep neurotic twisted thinking that can get people riled up and feeling all hard done by.

Our geekiness is partially our undoing. We spend so much time disagreeing with each other over the most perfect possible understanding of the political landscape that we no longer congregate en masse and just get stuff DONE.

Not that I'm any exception, or anything...

[tech3149]

1. I take offense to that remark!

Until 2003 I was totally apolitical. I knew from the 60's that it was all kabuki theater. I pretty much expected that even if I was well informed and made good decisions while voting, my effect wouldn't amount to piss in a pot compared to those out there voting on the basis of ill-informed or just plain lied to information.
The whole Iraq cluster fuck was the breaking point. It wasn't about politics, it was all about policy. There was no justification to support it in the "national interest" that was ever explained.
I had heard people that got some play on commercial media that made sense and I researched their history and it didn't take much to figure out that I was being sold a load of horse hockey.
If I could offer any advice to the youngers out there it would be don't believe anything from commercial media and hook up with those commie, pinko, liberal, listener supported outlets that aren't bought off to support what pays their bills.

[raven mad]

2. "The right aren't bothered about The Truth."

Bingo.